Ebola Reaches Guinean Capital, Stirring Fears

Freakin' gnarly, at the New York Times:

DAKAR, Senegal — An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the West African nation of Guinea has reached the crowded capital, Conakry, prompting new fears about its spread, health officials said Tuesday.

Over the past month, the disease has traveled from Guinea’s remote forest regions near the Liberia and Sierra Leone borders and has already killed 83 people, including four in Conakry.

Now, with 13 cases in a densely populated capital of two million people, health officials say the challenge of containing the outbreak has become more acute. Ebola has killed hundreds in rural Central Africa over the past four decades, but it is unusual for it to reach urban centers.

Residents of Conakry said Tuesday that disquiet had set in, though markets were crowded and the capital’s monstrous traffic jams continued unabated. Some were carrying around small bottles of bleach, people were avoiding shaking hands, and pharmacies were selling out of hand sanitizer.

“In Conakry everybody is worried,” said Fodé Abass Bangoura, a lawyer with an office downtown. “People are really preoccupied about this. There is a sort of psychosis about this now. I’m avoiding physical contact with people, and I’m eating at home.”...

The Ebola virus is rare but deadly. Its point of origin is often the consumption of bush meat, including meat from apes or possibly bats, and it has a fatality rate of up to 90 percent. Human transmission occurs through contact with bodily fluids. Already, the Guinea outbreak is more serious than the most recent previous one, in Uganda in 2012, when fewer than 50 died. In that outbreak, cases were also recorded in the capital, Kampala. But in some previous outbreaks in Central and Eastern Africa, as many as 400 cases were recorded, health officials said.

More.

And from Laurie Garrett, at Foreign Policy, "Don't Kiss the Cadaver":

The Ebola hemorrhagic disease is terrifying, as the virus punches microscopic holes in the endothelial lining of blood veins, vessels, and capillaries, causing blood to leak from its normal pipelines coursing through the body. Within hours, the punctures enlarge, the leaking turns into a flood, and blood pours into the intestines, bowels, and respiratory channels. As the victims become feverish -- raging in pain and hallucinations -- their tears drip red with blood. The crimson liquid flows from their noses, ears, bowels, bladders, mouths, while old wounds reopen all over their bodies. The deterioration is swift, transpiring from infection to death typically within five days. And Ebola is spread, via the infected body fluids, to attendant family members, health-care workers, and funeral preparers.

It's like a freakin' Biblical plague. Damn.