36 Ebola Deaths in DRC

The Health Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC for short, formerly Zaire) announced today that 36 people have died from ebola since the start of the latest outbreak there in mid-August. As many people know, ebola is a horrible disease that often ends in hemorrhaging to death from all the mucous membranes. Plus, it's super contagious and infectious. There is no FDA-approved vaccine for ebola. General prevention includes staying away from nonhuman primates and bats and once infections are in the human population, staying away from bodily fluids of the infected. If you're infected, your prognosis is pretty bad--epidemic deaths range from 44-100% of all cases.

Interestingly enough, the virus is named after a river in Northern DRC, the Ebola river, which is a small part of the Congo River.

Ebola River is a tributary of the River Congo, up there in the North

Ebola Outbreaks

Random Kate Thoughts: Modern medicine is a wonderful thing, but sometimes we forget that some of those really scary diseases are still out there. And in many ways, Africa drew the short end of the stick with these diseases. The tropical weather, people living in forests near all those animals... equatorial Africans don't have a lot of luck in terms of diseases. Then again, for context, the Second Congo War, aka the Great African War, which also took place predominantly in the DRC (from 1998-2003 officially) resulted in the deaths of 5.4 million people, making it the deadliest worldwide conflict since WWII. Makes 36 Ebola deaths not look that bad, huh.