Ebola-is it paranoia?

[Giovanni Maga]

Dear posters,
													lookin' at the huge amount of postings about the Ebola
outbreak in Zaire (I had more than 100 postings on my Newswatcher file
today) I just wondered why...Of course many more people are aware of this
virus now, after all that Outbreak+hot zone+coming plague debate, but still
the perception of the problem I think is going out from a strictly
scientific point of view. The daily updating on the course of the infection
is undoubtly useful but sometimes looks like a war bullettin, which is not
the case. There is no war now and no pain for an outbreak far from Zaire.
In the previous Zaire outbreak, ebola killed something about 400 people.
Now the official quotes are much lower (even if in all that mess of
informations taken from different sources is difficult to make out ther eal
ones) ranging from 60 to 100 deaths and 100 to 200 infected people from
April up to now. I was not yet dealing with science in 1976, but I do not
think that the massive killing occurred at that time received such a big
attention. So, don't you think that all the matter is going to be
sensationalized? It is good to provide informations, but it is not good to
give a distorpted view of the problem. Now Zaire outbreak is receiving on
the media the same or even more attention of Ruanda's killing or former
Jugo war...is it really such a big treat? I read lots of posters who were
terrifyed by the possibility of an Ebola outbreak in western countries,
maybe forgetting that Ebola has been known since 1976 and continuosly
infecting people in African countries...so why should it be at higher risk
now? I see that the opposite should be true, there should be less risk to
spread the infection now than 20 ys ago. I think it must be recalled that:
-Outbreak was a FICTION MOVIE and nothing more, please stop to make
parallels with the REAL virus
-WHO, CDC and all the scientific instns now on the field for facing the
infection are not trying to bribe us! Please, refer to their reports and
hints as reliable ones.
-Even in view of a possible oubreak of haemorragic fever in western
countries (which anyway is theoretically possible as it is for other
infectious deseases like cholerae or flu for example, but it's not likely
to happen solely for the fact that it's possible) we should think that
medical facilities and medical staff preparation should be enough powerful
to avoid massive spreading of the virus, much more than in underdeveloped
countries. So, please don't panic.
-The magnitude of the outbreaks recorded in Africa must *first* be
considered as an aspect of the poor health conditions and poor healthcare
practices, thus pointing at the fact that improving such social aspects
will be a way also to reduce risks of spreading. The Ebola outbreak, in my
hopinion, is more a social indicator than a world menace and must be faced
first by medical aid (to stop the infection) then by social aid (to reduce
the risk of another recurrency).
Just my 2 cents. G.Maga, PhD
maga at vetbio.unizh.ch