Ebola patient
"Most of us think of Ebola as sort of the cinematic portrayal of it — you know, bleeding out of the eyes and ears," Stern tells NPR's Audie Cornish in an interview on Morning Edition. "That happens, but it doesn't always happen, and it doesn't happen until the later stages of the virus."
In the early stages, he says, symptoms can look a lot like cholera and malaria. And since Guinea had never experienced Ebola, no one knew to look for it — not even people in the medical community.
"We tend to think of Ebola as a generally African scourge, but the last real outbreak had been more than 2,000 miles away," he stresses. "And it might as well have been another world for the people in the forest region of Guinea."
It wasn't until Dr. Michel Van Herp, an epidemiologist with Doctors Without Borders, noticed that half the patients listed on a medical report from Guinea had the hiccups that a light bulb went off.
"Hiccups is something that's associated — for reasons we're still not entirely sure of — with hemorrhagic fever, but especially with Ebola," Stern says.
Once they pinpointed the culprit, he says, aid organizations like MSF and the World Health Organization had an incredibly fast response — almost too fast. Health care volunteers were immediately sent in to track contacts and set up isolation wards, but public communication couldn't keep up with the efforts.
NPR: Hiccups Were The Clue That Led Researchers To Ebola
In the early stages, he says, symptoms can look a lot like cholera and malaria. And since Guinea had never experienced Ebola, no one knew to look for it — not even people in the medical community.
"We tend to think of Ebola as a generally African scourge, but the last real outbreak had been more than 2,000 miles away," he stresses. "And it might as well have been another world for the people in the forest region of Guinea."
It wasn't until Dr. Michel Van Herp, an epidemiologist with Doctors Without Borders, noticed that half the patients listed on a medical report from Guinea had the hiccups that a light bulb went off.
"Hiccups is something that's associated — for reasons we're still not entirely sure of — with hemorrhagic fever, but especially with Ebola," Stern says.
Once they pinpointed the culprit, he says, aid organizations like MSF and the World Health Organization had an incredibly fast response — almost too fast. Health care volunteers were immediately sent in to track contacts and set up isolation wards, but public communication couldn't keep up with the efforts.
NPR: Hiccups Were The Clue That Led Researchers To Ebola
Source: WAVUTI
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