Congo Ebola Outbreak Threatens to Be Most Serious in Years - washingtonpost.com

September 18, 2007

Anyone who knows me knows that I have been obsessed with Ebola for the past eleven years. I’ve read everything ever written about it and am a one-woman encyclopedia of Ebola. Which is why the Congo Ebola Outbreak has made my month (although I’m sorry for everyone who has died, of course).

But am I the only person wondering what strain of Ebola is killing people in the Congo? I can’t find any information about it anywhere and that’s just NOT COOL. The World Health Organization had issued a small new release about the outbreak: Ebola haemorrhagic fever in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and not even WHO discusses what strain of Ebola it is.

I’m thinking that it’s Ebola Sudan, which kills a little over 50% of those infected with it (which is about the rate of death for the Ebola cases in the Congo, hence my theory that it’s Ebola Sudan). If it were Ebola Zaire, which kills 90% of those infected, then there would be a whole lot more dead people. Odds are against it being Ebola CÃ´te dâ€™Ivoire, which is highly deadly for animals, and has only one known human infection (a scientist who was performing an autopsy on an infected chimpanzee contracted the virus). I like to think of Ebola CÃ´te dâ€™Ivoire as being simply another version of Ebola Reston (named after Reston, Virginia), which is very deadly for animals, but does no damage to humans.

See? I told you I was obsessed with Ebola. Here’s an odd fact for you: Ebola got it’s name from the Ebola River Valley in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) because it was close to the site of the first recognized Ebola outbreak in 1976.

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