WHO declared Ebola as Global Health Emergency

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Ebola as Global Health Emergency. The decision was taken after a two-day emergency session held in Geneva. During the two-day session, WHO appealed for global aid to help afflicted countries.

Ebola has claimed at least 932 lives and infected more than 1700 people since outbreak of the virus in Guinea in early 2014.

States of emergency has been declared across Ebola affected West African nations, including Libera, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

About Ebola disease

• Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a severe human disease.

• Ebola Virus was formerly known by the name Ebola haemorrhagic fever.

• EVD outbreak is generally witnessed in villages of Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.

• The virus spreads through contact with an infected animal mainly Fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family.

• Person suffering from Ebola Virus develops symptoms after two to three days of contracting with virus. These symptoms can be fever, sore throat, headache, nausea, muscle pain. In worst of cases, person may get affected with Diarrhoea along with poor functioning of liver and kidneys.

• Ebola-infected patients require thorough care. No specific treatment or medications are available to cure such patients.

• Ebola Virus was first witnessed in 1976 when it infected people of Nzara, Sudan, and Yambuku in Democratic Republic of Congo. Yambuku is a village near the Ebola River. The disease Ebola Virus took its name from that river.

• Professor Peter Piot of London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine discovered the Ebola virus in 1976 from a blood sample of a dying Catholic nun in Congo.