Ebola. Almost 10 years after the first case of Ebola in the country, the Basque Health Service (Osakidetza) today activated the Ebola protocol when faced with a picture of compatible symptoms. From the Basque Country they have been quick to make it clear that the patient is “stable” and that “in the next few days it will be confirmed whether or not the patient has contracted this disease.”
Despite this, all the alarms have gone off. This is what we know.
What happened? This morning, a 54-year-old woman was admitted to the High Biological Safety Unit of the Donostia University Hospital with symptoms compatible with Ebola. The Hospital, one of the seven that has the infrastructure to be able to treat this type of infection, launched a device. The patient, an anthropologist by profession and who had recently traveled to the Central African Republic, is “stable”.
What are “Ebola-compatible symptoms”? Naturally, very little data has been disclosed about this particular case and we do not know what “compatible symptoms” are referring to. The first symptoms are very non-specific: fever, weakness and muscle aches or headache. Later, vomiting, diarrhea, skin eruptions and, in the worst case, bleeding (internal and external) begin.
In any case, it is a severe hemorrhagic fever that is often fatal to humans (we are talking about a fatality rate of approximately 50%). However, it is important to bear in mind that the high mortality of outbreaks is due, in large part, to the fact that they take place in areas with limited health development (and where there is not always community collaboration).
We know, for example, that “early supportive treatment with rehydration and symptomatic treatment improve survival.” In addition, there is a treatment recognized by the WHO and numerous experimental treatments that could be used in this type of case.
How is it transmitted? Perhaps this is the great “weak point” of the disease and what, except for an accident, allows us to control it more effectively. It is transmitted either by wild animals (it is found naturally in fruit bats) or from person to person (through direct fluid contact).
Could it really be Ebola? It is possible, yes. However, a priori it does not seem the most likely. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no active Ebola outbreak in the world. And this, although of course it does not rule out anything, makes it unlikely that the patient contracted the disease on the trip.
In this sense, the activation of the protocol is part of the security measures. In this way, not only the best care is guaranteed, but security measures are taken to ensure that accidents such as the one that led nurse Teresa Romero to become the first infected in Spain with the virus are not repeated.
In Xataka | What bats keep: a new Chinese virus of the Ebola family will be key to learning how to better combat them
Image | Ainhoa Uxue
