As killer Ebola threatens to claim the life of another leading physician stationed in Africa, world health agencies scramble to quell growing fears that hundreds may now be carrying the disease worldwide:
The virus is so lethal it has a 90-percent mortality rate and is known to be one of the most contagious on the planet. There is also no known cure.
Prior to American doctor and missionary Kent Brantly taking sick with it this past week, Patrick Sawyer, 40, also contracted the disease while in the region. But, whilst the "gravely ill" Brantly is presently in quarantine, denied permission to return to his homeland or go elsewhere for needed treatment, Sawyer was allowed to freely travel wherever he pleased.
In fact, the then highly-infectious government official managed to board a number of international flights without detection, during which he came in direct physical contact with hundreds of unsuspecting air passengers and employees.
Scarier still is that, on the last leg of his journey, Sawyer was visibly ill with fever, sweats, diarrhea, bleeding and vomiting, yet only trace amounts of sweat, feces, blood, urine, saliva or vomit are necessary for transmitting the Ebola virus to other persons.
And, although upon landing, Patrick Sawyer was whisked away to a hospital where he then succumbed to the final throes of the disease, all those he could have infected
before dying continued onward in their travels to different countries.
The case of Dr. Brantly, said to be on his own deathbed now, bears frightening similarities in that his wife and young children had just come to see him in Africa where he was stationed to assist in containing the runaway ebola epidemic.
They all recently returned to the United States, evidently without being subjected to a single screening and only a few days before the doctor's dire diagnosis was finally released.
In the interim, yet another American aid worker has been stricken with Ebola; this one a young female charged with the duty of decontaminating patients, operating rooms, and other parts of the medical facility where she was employed as a nurse.
Dr. Brantly's family members are apparently all in good health at the moment. However, it's still too soon to say that none of them contracted the virus during their African visit because it can take up to three weeks to become fully symptomatic.
Nevertheless, health-agency spokesmen are today adamantly insisting that America is "absolutely in no danger" of a deadly Ebola outbreak such as the one Dr. Brantly, Nurse Writebol, and their various healthcare associates were sent to address in Africa.
But that doesn't seem to make any sense, now does it?
Maybe that's why the CDC sent an Ebola alert to U.S. doctors just yesterday, in it demanding they question, test, and isolate all patients who might be infected with the killer virus...
E.R.
