X-Message-Number: 4386 Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 12:21:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: Ebola Virus (part 2) Kevin is quite correct: any cryonicist who dies of an agent as infectious and as lethal as the Ebola virus should not expect to be cryopreserved. I would imagine that public health authorities would take control of the case, quite apart from the justifiable reluctance of a cryopreservation team to expose itself to that degree of danger. Anyone with access to Usenet can get updates on the current situation in Zaire by checking sci.med and bionet.virology news groups. Here is a summary of the history so far, which I found in the latter group today: __________________ 04-08-95, 7:06 PM: Reuters reports that a Swiss scientist in Africa's Ivory Coast is infected with an unspecified variant of the Ebola virus as she performs a necropsy on a chimpanzee. The scientist is evacuated to Switzerland and, at the time of the report, is still alive. 05-09-95, 12:54 PM: The Associated Press reports that soldiers are guarding roads into Kikwit, Zaire, after more than 100 people die of an unidentified disease. A World Health Organization (WHO) consultant, Dr. Muyembe Tamfun, blames the Ebola virus for the epidemic. Zaire's health ministry says the outbreak began April 10 when a surgical patient at the Kikwit hospital infected medical workers there. Sixty-three people are now hospitalized with the illness in Kikwit. 05-09-95, 1:33 PM EDT: The Associated Press reports that, among the Kikwit victims, are two doctors and four Italian missionaries. 05-10-95, 2:21 AM: Reuters says The Washington Post has reported that as many as fifty people have died of a hemorrhagic fever, possibly Ebola, in Zaire. 05-10-95, 3:35 AM: Reuters reports that WHO puts the Kikwit death count at fifty-nine. 05-10-95, 4:25 AM: Reuters reports that government officials in Zaire say at least ninety people have died from either a hemorrhagic fever or dysentery in the Kikwit area. Zaire sets up a special medical commission; one doctor with the commission tells Reuters, "The situation could get totally out of control." Reports from Kikwit say the general hospital there is deserted. The province in which Kikwit is situated, Bandundu Province, i s home to nearly five million people. 05-10-95, 5:16 AM: Reuters reports that, since January 1, thirty-three cases of suspected hemorrhagic fever have been reported. 05-10-95, 5:18 AM: Reuters reports that two Italian nuns working as nurses are among the dead. 05-10-95, 5:46 AM: Reuters reports that Zaire government sources put the death toll at ninety. 05-10-95, 7:30 AM: The Associated Press reports that Dr. Peter Piot, head of the UN AIDS program and co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, says the epidemic in Zaire has all the hallmarks of Ebola. 05-10-95, 8:36 AM: Reuters reports that both dysentery and a hemorrhagic fever are killing people in Zaire. Government officials put the cumulative death toll of the two unrelated illnesses at ninety. Three of the dead, says Zaire state television, are Italian nuns. 05-10-95, 9:15 AM: Reuters talks to representatives of Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns based in Bergamo, Italy. The order says that two of its members are in "stable but grave condition" in Kikwit. Another two members of the order, which specializes in nursing, died in Kikwit the previous week. Two Bergamo nuns who attended the funerals of the Zaire nuns, one of whom was their sister, have been in strict quarantine since their return to Italy on Saturday. 05-10-95, 9:44 AM: The Associated Press reports that Doctors Without Borders, a medical aid group based in Belgium, says that the Zaire city of Mosango, seventy-five miles west of Kikwit, may also have an outbreak of an Ebola-like disease. At least ten people in Mosango have been infected; three have died. 05-10-95, 9:46 AM: Reuters reports that an Italian missionary says a fever with Ebola-like symptoms wiped out two villages in the Azande region of southern Sudan last year. The missionary told Reuters that about 200 people died in the the Sudan's Nzara district last year; he also said that Nzara had a similar outbreak years before. 05-10-95, 4:31 PM: CDC National Center for Infectious Diseases Deputy Director Dr. Ruth Berkelman tells Reuters that CDC planned to send a researcher to the Ivory Coast [EDITOR'S NOTE: SEE ENTRY FOR 04-08-95] to investigate the Ebola case that emerged there on April 8, but, "Instead, they've been diverted to Zaire." 05-10-95, 4:46 PM: Reuters reports that the top civil servant in Zaire's health ministry told state television today that the first cases of the virus appeared on March 27. 05-10-95, 5:45 MST: On the NBC Nightly News, NBC News correspondent Robert Bazell reports: "Sources tell NBC News that tests at this maximum containment laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta have confirmed that the outbreak is due to the Ebola virus, one of the most deadly infectious agents known to humanity. . . . Experts know the virus is transmitted by blood, but they worry that there may also be airborne transmission." -------------------- This summary was prepared by: S. M. Fitzgerald V-mail: 602/838-1657 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4386