Voice 1
Hello. I’m Ruby Jones.
Voice 2
And I’m Rachel Hobson. Welcome to Spotlight. This programme uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 1
The sun beats down on the rain forest. The air is hot and damp. A village stands in a clear place in the forest. Its small houses are made of grass. But these houses are empty. All the people are gathered under a tree. They talk quietly. Their eyes are wide with fear. They have heard stories of another village nearby. They know that some people there are very sick, that they are dying. They have heard the words they fear the most - the Ebola virus.
Voice 2
In today’s Spotlight we tell of the Ebola virus. We talk about recent cases of this disease. Why are people so afraid of Ebola? Is there any hope of helping people who have Ebola to survive?
Voice 1
Doctors and researchers first discovered the Ebola virus in 1976. At that time hundreds of people started dying. They lived near the Ebola River, in the north east part of Zaire. Zaire is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DR Congo. Around the same time people in nearby parts of Sudan started dying too. Doctors had not seen anything like it. In total this disease killed over four hundred people in a very short period of time. In some villages, the disease killed everybody.
Voice 2
And yet, Ebola has never killed a large number of people, like malaria or HIV-AIDS. So why do people fear it? One reason is that it can spread quickly from person to person in a community. Another reason is that the effects of the disease are horrible to suffer, or even to see. Victims bleed badly. And yet another reason is that the disease kills most people who catch it.
Voice 1
Researchers discovered that Ebola can stay in a person’s body up to twenty-one days before the person feels sick. During this time the Ebola virus develops into Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever. When that happens, people usually die after only three or four days. The first sign is a sudden fever. The patient feels weak. He or she feels pain in different parts of the body - the head, muscles and throat.
Voice 2
The patient keeps getting worse. He gets diarrhoea. He cannot keep food in his stomach. His skin develops marks - a rash. His kidneys and liver start to fail. And his body starts bleeding both inside and outside. Finally, he dies from the bleeding.
Voice 1
Ebola spreads easily to other people through body fluids - blood and waste. Often people who care for infected people get sick too.
Voice 2
Since 1976, Ebola has appeared over thirteen times. The worst cases have been in DR Congo and other countries in central Africa - Sudan, Gabon and Uganda. Ebola kills fifty to ninety percent [50-90%] of people it infects. There is no cure - so medical workers can only give support treatments. For example they try to replace the fluids and minerals that sick people lose.
Voice 1
Doctors also take steps to stop the virus from spreading in the community. Immediately, they try to contain it. They do this by keeping infected people separate from other people. However, there are other less severe diseases that cause similar physical problems to the Ebola virus - skin rashes, fever and diarrhea. So when doctors suspect a case of Ebola, they send blood samples away for testing.
Voice 2
As well as this, doctors must carefully train local health workers how to protect themselves. Health workers have to wear special clothes. They must completely disinfect equipment. And they have to deal carefully with infected people’s dirty clothes and bed coverings.
Voice 1
Containing Ebola attacks is not easy. Doctors must find people who may have met and touched Ebola victims. They have to warn these people about the dangers. Some of these people could visit other villages - and spread Ebola to them. The doctors observe all these people for three weeks. They measure their temperature two times every day. People with a high temperature are separated from the community.
Voice 2
An important part of containing Ebola is educating local communities about the disease. Medical workers have trained local people to recognize signs of the disease. They have told them safe measures to follow such as how to deal with dead bodies. This is important because in some funeral traditions, people wash dead bodies. Health workers have told people not to directly touch the bodies of people who die from Ebola. In the past, whole families have died after getting the disease from washing a dead family member’s body.
Voice 1
Several countries are trying hard to battle the Ebola virus. But sadly, in April 2007, people in Kananga in DR Congo started getting sick. By September over three hundred and fifty [350] people were sick. And one-hundred and sixty-eight [168] had died. At first, health officials did not know if the disease killing people was Ebola. They needed an answer urgently. They sent blood samples to laboratories in Gabon and the United States.
Voice 2
The blood samples showed that some of the cases were Ebola. Health officials became very concerned. But that was not the only news. Other diseases were there too - typhoid and shigella. Some people had more than one disease.
Voice 1
Health Officials in DR Congo started to treat all of the diseases. But their main concern was to find and treat people with the Ebola virus. And international groups helped too. For example, ‘Doctors Without Borders’ sent supplies. They sent tents for shelter and materials to build more shelters. They sent medicine, water and cleaning materials. Other aid groups sent teams of doctors and experts to DR Congo. They set up temporary movable laboratories. In this way doctors could test for Ebola in the immediate area. They could quickly identify which disease a person had.
Voice 2
Community education, containment methods and tests are important. But until a cure can be found, this terrible disease will continue to claim lives. No one knows exactly where Ebola comes from. But scientists do have some theories. Maybe learning about the origins of this disease could provide the answer to preventing it. In another programme, we will tell of an important theory about where Ebola comes from. Could this be the answer to solving the Ebola mystery?
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