Ebola: Source, Transmission, and Vaccination Development
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Added on  2023/01/17
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This assignment discusses the source and transmission of Ebola virus, the reasons for the delay in vaccination development, and the health management and prevention of the disease.
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Running head: EBOLA EBOLA Name of the student: Name of the university: Author note:
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1 EBOLA Introduction: Ebola virus is responsible for creating an acute and serious illness which gets fatal when not treated. EVD or the Ebola virus disease had first appeared in the year 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks. One of them took place in Nzara, South Sudan and the other in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo (Osmond, 2016). The latter occurred in the village near the Ebola River from where the disorder takes the name. This assignment will mainly talk aboutthesourceand transmissionofthedisorders. Itwoulddiscusswhy developinga vaccination for the virus took a long time. It would also discuss the differences in public health structures and prevention methods of richer and poorer countries in managing the disorder. Source of condition and the ways it is transmitted: Studies are of the opinion that people are initially infected with that that of the Ebola virus through contacts with an infected animal like fruits bats or nonhuman primates. This is termed as the spillover events. After that, the virus is seen to spread from person to person potentially affecting a huge number of people. The virus is seen to spread through direct contact like that through broken skin as well as mucous membranes in the eyes, mouth or the nose with the help of different types of membranes (Goh et al., 2015). Blood or body fluids like that of urine, saliva, vomit, breast milk, sweat, feces, and semen of an infected person or from a person who has died from EVD is one of the medium of transmission. Objects like that of syringes and needles that remain contaminated with the body fluids from that of the affected person or that of the dead person due to EVD is another medium. Infected fruit bats or that of the non-human primates like that of monkeys and apes may also act as sources for the spreading of the disorder. Many of the studies have also opined semen of infected persons who had recovered from EVD
2 EBOLA during the various types in sex like oral, vaginal, or anal sex can become one of the ways of spreading the infection. The virus is seen to remain in many of the bodily fluids like that of semen of a patient who have recovered from EVD even when they show no symptoms of severe illness (Soka et al., 2016). It should however be noted that this virus can never be transmitted through food. However, in many of the countries, this virus might be transferred through the handling as well as consumption of the bush-meat like that of the wild animals that are hunted for food. There had been no evidences that this virus gets transmitted by mosquitoes pr that by other insects. Firstly, when infected by the virus of Ebola, they would show no signs and symptoms of the ailment from that time only. Studies have found out that this virus cannot spread to others until the person develops any signs and symptoms of the EVD. It is only after the infected person by EVD starts showing symptoms and signs of the illness, they become able to spread the infection to that of the others.Secondly, there remains no risk of a healthy person to get infected with the virus through that of the casual contact with that of the survivor. However, the virus might still remain in certain of the body fluids of the patients and continue to spread to the others after the person had recovered from that of the infection (Waheed et al., 20190. The virus is seen to persist in the breast milk, semen, spinal column fluid and even in the ocular eye fluid. The specific areas of the body that are seen to contain this form of fluids are known as the immunologically privileged sites. Studies are of the opinion that these specific sites are those regions of the body where viruses and pathogens like that of the Ebola virus can get undetected even after the immune system successfully clear the virus from the other sites of the body. Scientists are seen still to uncover the fact about how long the virus stays in these body fluids among the different Ebola survivors (Schultz et al., 2016).Third, serologic studies have put
3 EBOLA forward much important information. Ebola virus is detected in cats and dogs that live in the areas where Ebola outbreak had taken place. However, there had been no reports of this virus spreading through cats and dogs where they get affected themselves or spreading disease to humans. Certain exotic animals and unusual pets like that apes, pigs and monkeys have higher risk for being affected with the virus and spreading it when they get exposed to it.Pigs are the only species of livestock that can get affected by Ebola virus (Mate et al., 2015). In the nation of china and Philippines, pigs are found to be naturally infected with Ebola Reston virus which does not cause illness in people. Reasons for Ebola taking time for vaccination development: The Ebola outbreak had cause immense suffering and pain on a catastrophic level and had infected about 28000 people killing of about 11000 people in the outbreak of 2014-2016. One of the key reasons for all this form of suffering was the lack and absence of licensed vaccines in the present day market. From the time of first identification of the virus namely Ebola in the year 1976, there had been also around killing of 1500 people in the 26 outbreaks which is about 705 of the people who had been infected (Siedner et al., 2017). Still, research and development of that of the Ebola vaccine had been found to be subjected to long delays. One of the aspects of selfishness identified globally is that producing vaccines as well as drugs for a disorder that mainly affects the developing countries had not been considered a lucrative business by many nations. Adrian Hill who is an internationally acclaimed scientist of the Oxford University heads the Jenner Institute for public sector vaccine development. He had clearly stated that “we did
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4 EBOLA have vaccines sitting in large bags, available to be tested at the start of the outbreak,’. The researcher had stated in one of the recent public lecture is that they had not been able to make a business case to different of the companies for investing on the development as well as licensing of the Ebola vaccine which had the cost of about hundreds of millions of thousands (Kucharsiski et al., 2016). Research into the Ebola vaccine had been stated to have started a decade before to that of the 2014 outbreak. The results had been promising but the progress had been found to be slow. Researchers in the US as well as in the Canada had been seen to possess vaccine candidates who had been proven to be 100 percent effective in protection of the primates from that of the virus but they have not had any advancement to be treated and tested on that of the humans. The main motive was criticized by many of the professionals who stated that the impetus behind the research was not to save the different lives in that of the developing countries like that of Africa but to defend the North Americans against any form of bio-terrorism attacks (Hossman et al., 2017). The Jenner Institute had received funding from that of the World health organization (WHO) in the year 2014 for accelerating the research and for developing the new vaccines as well as for fast tracking the testing of the existing Ebola vaccines on the humans in response to that of the 2014 outbreak. The outcome of WHO’s call was unprecedented. About a total of 13 Ebola vaccines candidates had began their clinical trials. One of the vaccine called the Merck’s rVSV-ZEBOV had even progressed as far for demonstrating that its outcomes was effective as well as safe (Caluwaerts et al., 2019). While on the other hand, Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline had been yet seen to be far into clinical trials. Therefore, it can be stated that the vaccine were very much present, developed and were readythat could have saved huge
5 EBOLA number of lives in the 2014 outbreak but it was not introduced as it had not been tested on the humans. Another important aspect of the issue is the business mindedness and the industry incentives which are the main concerns for the pharmacological industries. Gary Kobinger, Director of the Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases at Laval University in Canada had been already found to criticize this aspect stating that if the present state of condition depends on the pharmaceutical] industry entirely, they might found out that the priorities of the industries are not aligning with the priorities of the society at a particular time (Kim et al., 2015). He is currently working on the development of the Ebola drug ZMapp as well as the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine at the Canadian National Microbiology lab which is now being developed by Merck. He is of the opinion that countries that have money should come forward and put money for supporting the projects. Health management and prevention of the condition: Ebola diseases had mainly affected the developing nations of Africa with that of the last outbreak of 2014 creating havocs in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Libya. However, the healthcare systems in the poor nations of Africa had failed miserably in handling the outbreak of Ebola effectively. Firstly, poorer nations are mainly seen to have weak health systems that have basic public health infrastructures in place that cannot stand the sudden shocks that come from climate change, environmental disasters as well as with that of the runaway virus (Giesecke, 2017). It had been seen that under the weight of the Ebola, health systems in the Liberia, Sierra Leone as well as guinea had collapsed. People by that time had stopped receiving as well as seeking for
7 EBOLA the cooperative community. Only having sufficient amount of staffs and facilities in healthcare sector is not enough (Cohen, 2017). In many of the poorer countries, it has been seen that communities had tried to conceal bodies of affected individuals in their houses and bury their bodies even when sufficient treatment beds as well as burial teams were available in their areas. Therefore, importance of health literacy, education, proper communication and health promotion programs are important which are more pronounced in richer nations than the poorer nations. This would help in the effective management of Ebola. Conclusion: From the above discussion, it becomes clear that Ebola is a virus that had its first outbreak in the year 1976 and mainly gets transmitted to people from that of wild animals and spreads among the human population through human to human transmission. Although the vaccines had been already prepared and ready to be introduced before 2014, lack of funding and investments for licensing and developing the vaccines across the globe had mainly made the 2014 outbreak more dangerous one. The business-mindedness of the pharmaceutical industries of the developed countries witnessed no gains in the circulation of the vaccines in the developing countries and this had delayed the progress. Moreover, it was not tested on the humans in clinical trial and this had prevented it to be used as the vaccines in 2014 outbreak. Richer countries are able to manage or prevent this disease successfully because of their adequate staffing of health workforce,properinformationandresearchfunding,medicaltechnologiesandproducts, effectivesurveillance,propercommunicationandeffectivecommunityengagementin comparison to the poorer countries. Hence, these aspects need to be considered for developing a healthcare environment which would help in tackling any health shocks or disaster that affect human world.
8 EBOLA References: Bitanihirwe,B.K.Y.(2016).Monitoringandmanagingmentalhealthinthewakeof Ebola.Annali dell'Istituto superiore di sanita,52(3), 320-322. Caluwaerts, S., & Kahn, P. (2019). Ebola and Pregnant Women: Providing Maternity Care at MSF Treatment Centers. InPregnant in the Time of Ebola(pp. 87-101). Springer, Cham. Cohen,D.B.(2017).EbolainWestAfrica:BiosocialandBiomedicalReflections. InEncouraging Openness(pp. 143-164). Springer, Cham. Edwards, S. J., Norell, C. H., Illari, P., Clarke, B., & Neuhaus, C. P. (2018). A radical approach to Ebola: Saving humans and other animals.The American Journal of Bioethics,18(10), 35-42. Giesecke, J. (2017).Modern infectious disease epidemiology. CRC Press. Goh, G. K. M., Dunker, A. K., & Uversky, V. N. (2015). Detection of links between Ebola nucleocapsid and virulence using disorder analysis.Molecular BioSystems,11(8), 2337- 2344. Hossmann, S., Haynes, A. G., Spoerri, A., Diatta, I. D., Aboubacar, B., Egger, M., ... & Trelle, S. (2017).DatamanagementofclinicaltrialsduringanoutbreakofEbolavirus disease.Vaccine. Kim, D., Guo, H., Li, Y., Wang, W., Kwon, S. S., & Tokuta, A. O. (2015, August). Social relationbasedlong-termvaccinedistributionplanningtosuppresspandemic. InInternational Conference on Computational Social Networks(pp. 26-34). Springer, Cham.
9 EBOLA Kucharski, A. J., Eggo, R. M., Watson, C. H., Camacho, A., Funk, S., & Edmunds, W. J. (2016). Effectiveness of ring vaccination as control strategy for Ebola virus disease.Emerging infectious diseases,22(1), 105. Mate, S. E., Kugelman, J. R., Nyenswah, T. G., Ladner, J. T., Wiley, M. R., Cordier-Lassalle, T., ...&Shinde,S.A.(2015).MolecularevidenceofsexualtransmissionofEbola virus.New England Journal of Medicine,373(25), 2448-2454. Osmond, C. (2016). Ebola virus transmission and intervention effectiveness.pNaS,113(16), 4231-4233. Shultz, J. M., Althouse, B. M., Baingana, F., Cooper, J. L., Espinola, M., Greene, M. C., ... & Rechkemmer, A. (2016). Fear factor: the unseen perils of the Ebola outbreak.Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,72(5), 304-310. Siedner, M. J., & Kraemer, J. D. (2017). The end of the Ebola virus disease epidemic: has the work just begun?.The Lancet Global Health,5(4), e381-e382. Soka, M. J., Choi, M. J., Baller, A., White, S., Rogers, E., Purpura, L. J., ... & Kollie, J. (2016). Prevention of sexual transmission of Ebola in Liberia through a national semen testing and counselling programme for survivors: an analysis of Ebola virus RNA results and behavioural data.The Lancet Global Health,4(10), e736-e743. Venkatraman, N., Ndiaye, B. P., Bowyer, G., Wade, D., Sridhar, S., Wright, D., ... & Bakhoum, M. (2018). Safety and Immunogenicity of a Heterologous Prime-Boost Ebola Virus Vaccine Regimen in Healthy Adults in the United Kingdom and Senegal.The Journal of Infectious Diseases.
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10 EBOLA Venkatraman, N., Pierre Ndiaye, B., Bowyer, G., Wade, D., Sridhar, S., Wright, D., ... & Bakhoum, M. (2018). Safety and immunogenicity of a heterologous prime-boost Ebola virus vaccine regimen-ChAd3-EBO-Z followed by MVA-EBO-Z in healthy adults in the UK and Senegal.Journal of Infectious Diseases. Waheed, Y., Malik, S., Khan, M., & Najmi, M. H. (2019). The World after Ebola: An overview of Ebola complications, vaccine development, and lessons learned, financial losses and disease preparedness.Critical Reviewsâ„¢ in Eukaryotic Gene Expression.