FILE - This undated photo of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, provided shows that the Ebola virus than by an electron microscope. Mid-2014, Ebola has twenty households in Africa, since the virus first appeared in the 1976th
APPosted: Sunday, August 17, 2014 21.33 clock
Last updated on: Sunday, August 17, 2014 21.33 clock
A frightening problem is about the desperate efforts to keep people from the spread of the Ebola virus: Nobody knows exactly where the virus comes from or how to stop planting new homes.
Ebola is responsible for about twenty houses in Africa for the first appearance in 1976, comes from somewhere - probably bats - but experts agree that they need to identify their origin in nature.
That had to wait until they master the current outbreak, which has claimed more than 1,100 lives in four countries - the worst record in the history of Ebola.
"First class, the epidemic under control. Once this part is solved, then go back and find out what the source," said Jonathan Towner, a scientist who helped find the origin of another disease Ebola-like Marburg virus called bat . Towner works for the Centers for Disease Control and prevention of disease.
Others say they find the origins of Ebola is more than a scientific curiosity on the way.
"Confirmation of the source would certainly be important," said Dr. Richard Wenzel, a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led on the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
Throughout history some of the greatest victories have been linked to infectious diseases not only the spread limit from person to person, but also research and source control on the nature of the new supply case.
The plague was stopped after the seed was rat fleas riding attached. With SARS, civets have played a role. Typhus lice, and avian influenza in live-bird markets. Control efforts to SEAS, a virus that causes sporadic outbreaks in the Middle East, including research on the role of camels.
In the case of Ebola virus, health experts believe that the first cases to obtain in all households eating or handling infected animals. They believe that the virus come from some bats, and in some parts of Africa, bats are considered a delicacy.
But bats are not the whole story or the creature spread to humans.
The World Health Organization calls chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, antelope and porcupines forest as the ability to play a role. Also, pork, infection by flying foxes to strengthen on farms, says the WHO.
"It is unclear what the animal is. Taking a lot of tests," said Dr. Robert Gaines, a specialist in infectious diseases at Emory University, who has worked for the CDC for more than 20 years.
Part of the puzzle is how long the virus in West Africa. Previous eruptions on the east and central areas of the continent have been.
The current epidemic began in rural Guinea, and the first first suspected case was a 2-year-old boy who died in the prefecture Guéckédou in December, the researchers wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine in April. You would not like to speculate the child was infected.
Some scientists believe that the virus is hiding in the region for years. They point to the case of a lone researcher who in 1994, after I became an autopsy on a wild chimpanzee in the Ivory Coast and a recent study which explored the possibility that the recent cases of Ebola in the region were diagnosed sick.
Scientists in the United States and Sierra Leone have returned to hundreds of blood samples were sent to 2008 saw in a test laboratory in Eastern Sierra Leone from 2006, the samples were initially only for Lassa fever, which is common, checked West Africa. But when scientists have recently tested again and for other infections, they found about 9 percent was Ebola.
Have one or more species of Ebola virus "been there, probably in the mix," do not explode for a while, but for some reason in a generalized epidemic in West Africa, until this year, said Stephen Morse, a specialist in diseases infectious to the University of Columbia.
Ebola jump from animals to humans is considered rare. Experts say there may be some degree of bad luck for the infection - connected tested found in a cave with Marburg virus Towner in only 3 percent of the bats. Even if an animal source clearly identified, and the people said, "is always likely to be a spectator - someone who leads from the street, essentially," Morse said.
But have proven with other diseases, control measures to be effective.
2003, as civets were to SARS, in live animal markets, where they were sold and slaughtered for food "you could see widespread the potential of animal-to-human", and control these markets in southern China has contributed to the epidemic limit, said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, a professor at Emory University and former head of the CDC.
"When the market, it was disposed of by the provision of alternative sources of protein" or the sale of such meat ", can have a impact," Koplan said.
It is difficult, unless you can supply other foods, where Towner.
To convince people to try to feed the families to stay away from potentially dangerous "It can be a hard sell," he said.