Related Resources • Article on Ebola outbreak in Uganda Nov. 2000 • Internet links on hemorrhagic fevers • Doctor dies fighting Ebola

Elsewhere on the Web • CDC Ebola Fact Sheet • CIA Factbook on Gabon • ABCNews: Ebola vaccine tested

So far, 15 people in Gabon have died from Ebola infection. On Saturday, December 28, doctors in the town of Makokou confirmed that a 16-year-old boy has been admitted to the hospital with the disease, as has another patient with similar symptoms. Neither patient is known to have had any contact with the people in Mekambo.

Trying to contain the disease
In neighboring Republic of Congo, 12 more suspected cases of Ebola infection have been identified, and 6 people have died. This, and the news of the infections in Makokou, has the World Health Organization, Gabon's health ministry, and Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) concerned about the spread of the virus.

A deadly virus
Medically, Ebola infection is known as hemorrhagic fever, one of several viruses to cause epidemics (the others are Lassa, Marburg, and Crimean-Congo). Ebola was first identified in an outbreak in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Mekambo region of Gabon had an Ebola outbreak in 1996, in which 66 people died.

Its first symptoms are like the flu: headache, body aches and pains, sore throat, then diarrhea and abdominal pain. After the third day of illness, the blood vessels in the body begin to leak, and blood comes out everywhere--from the mouth, the nose, all the body organs, even the eyes. Ebola causes death in 50 to 90 percent of people who become infected, usually due to losing too much blood. There is no cure, but with early medical care healthy people can survive the infection.

How to stop it
Researchers don't know where the virus lives in nature when it's not infecting people. They have begun to suspect that people may carry the virus but not have symptoms, which would make it very difficult to control its spread. People contract it when they come in contact with infected blood or body fluids.

Scientists also believe that chimpanzees can become infected with Ebola. In Gabon, chimpanzee meat is considered a delicacy and many people eat it during the Christmas season, so this may have been a source of the current infections.

Information for this article was taken from:
- "Death toll in Ebola outbreak hits 21." MSNBC News. Available online.
- "Doctors Fear Ebola is Spreading." The New York Times, December 29, 2001.
- Okamba, L. "Ebola outbreak spreads from Gabon to Republic of Congo." The Boston Globe, December 21, 2001.