It’s been on the news a lot.

And for a good reason, it’s one of the deadliest diseases humanity faces…

the second deadliest technically.

It’s making a stand in West Africa.

Plus for the first time, two US citizens with the disease have been flown home for treatment

but don’t bar the doors and windows and get yourself world up

into some kinda 2006 Bird Flu hysteria

because we’ve met Ebola before and we’re learning more about it than ever.

It used to be known as Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever

more recently Ebola Virus disease.

But what the media have lately been referring to simply and sometimes hysterically as Ebola

is really one of at least five known species of the Ebola virus.

What they’re referring to is the most dangerous species known as the Zaire ebolavirus or Zebov

named after the Central African country where it was first discovered in 1976

along the banks of the Ebola river.

It’s in the news because it has infected more people this year

than it has any other year since that first outbreak.

So far in 2014, it infected 1, 323 people

729 have died and the virus has moved into some of West Africa’s major population centers

including countries like Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and possibly the Nigerian Capital of Lagos.

So it’s newsworthy for sure and for plenty of reasons.

According to the World Health Organization,

Zebov has an average fatality rate of 83%

but in some outbreaks, it has killed more than 90% of the people infected.

Ebola is the type hemorrhagic fever which means one of its most prominent symptoms is heavy bleeding either internally or externally

but blood loss isn’t what kills its hosts.

After causing flu-like symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea,

Zebov targets the entire circulatory system causing blood vessels to fail blood pressure to drop

and eventually all of the major organs to shut down.

Let’s check our heads for a minute.

For one thing, Ebola is definitely contagious but it’s not as easily transmitted as like with the flu.

It’s not an airborne disease.

It’s only contagious by infecting people who are exhibiting symptoms at the time

and even then it can only pass through close contact with bodily fluids.

That’s why people who are getting infected are healthcare workers working in pretty austere conditions

or family members of patients who treat their loved ones at home and prepare their bodies for burial.

By being on the same airplane or in the same hospital ward as an Ebola patient

doesn’t mean you’ve automatically been exposed to the virus.

And in another glimmer of hope, it turns out that some people have developed a natural immunity to Ebola.

A study in 2010 found out that more than 15% of people in the West African Country of Gabon carry antibodies for this Zebov virus even though there is no record of an Ebola outbreak there.

Researchers think that those people who were exposed to the virus over decades probably through fruit that had been contaminated by bats

which are the original carriers of the disease.

But instead of getting sick, these people just developed natural defenses.

We’re not sure why but as you might imagine,

there’s a lot of scientific interest in the people have gone right now

and of course, there’s no vaccine for Ebola but many prototypes are being developed.

You may remember the news we shared last year about a breakthrough in this effort.

Biologists in Boston found that cells treated with the kind of compound called Indoline Alkaloids block the ability of Ebola virus to replicate itself.

These alkaloids are the same class of chemicals that give many plants their medicinal properties.

Several scientists haven’t figured out why they work or how to turn them into an effective Ebola treatment.

But even beyond the short term risks of the current outbreak,

it’s worth looking at the bigger picture.

The figures coming out of West Africa while scary and tragic pale in comparison to other public health crisis in the region.

Last week, I mentioned that the incidence of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa is still over 12% in some countries

and more than 1.2 million people die from AIDS there every year.

Meanwhile, over 600,000 deaths occur every year due to Malaria.

The more attention that all of these public health crises get the better.

So maybe the best outcome of this current scare might not be the better treatment of Ebola

but also more money, science and brain power are being devoted to conquering even bigger threats in West Africa and other parts of the world.

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