About EVD

• Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness affecting humans and other primates.
• The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. 
• The first EVD outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests in 1976. The 2014–2016 outbreak in West Africa was the largest and most complex Ebola outbreak.
• There are several identified Ebola virus species which includes Ebola virus (Zaire ebolavirus); Sudan virus (Sudan ebolavirus); Taï Forest virus (Taï Forest ebolavirus), etc.

Transmission

• It is thought that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are natural Ebola virus hosts. 
• Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals such as fruit bats, chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, forest antelope or porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.
• Ebola then spreads through human-to-human transmission via 
  • blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with or has died from Ebola 
  • objects that have been contaminated with body fluids (like blood, feces, vomit) from a person sick with Ebola or the body of a person who died from Ebola.

Why in News?

• Uganda is set to declare an end to an Ebola virus outbreak that emerged in late 2021 and has claimed the lives of at least 56 people.

https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/clinicians/vaccine/index.html