The Age Of The Super Virus: Why We Should Be Concerned


prostate geneva; font-size: small;”>Five people who had close contact with the deceased are also suspected to have contracted the disease; two of these are in an isolation unit at Mulago National Referral Hospital in the capital, cialis 40mg Kampala, two in health centres in Luwero and one at Bombo Military Hospital, 30km north of the capital.

The Ministry of Health has begun tracing people who may have had contact with the deceased and those infected.

This is the second outbreak of the deadly contagious disease in three months in a country which is still trying to recover from a Marburg outbreak that hit the southwest of the country and killed eight people.

The already burned health care system in Uganda is stretched to the limit with these diseases which can travel over great distances and infect great numbers of people in hours.

The outbreaks in Uganda represent an ever present danger that the world faces. With the improvement of transportation, people can travel anywhere in the world in hours which means the ability of diseases to spread is greatly increased and the dangers of a worldwide outbreak of an incurable disease becomes ever more present.

One of the deadliest natural disasters in Human history was the Influenza pandemic of 1918 which lasted from January 1918 to December 1920. Between 20 million to 50 million people died worldwide which was about 3 % of the world’s population at the time and all this happened in a time where the fastest form of transportation over great distances was still the railroad.

Since then the world has been hit by several pandemics but non as dangerous as 1918 influenza outbreak although the Avian and Swine Flu outbreaks in 2009 showed the modern world how easy it was for an outbreak to occur.

Incidentally the Avian flu strain is a mutated variation of the Influenza strain that broke out in 1918.

This is an age of clinical and medicinal advancement. The progress of medicine since the industrial age has made it easier for doctor’s to cure diseases and save people lives but there is so much that medical advancement can do.

The greatest worry the world has right now in medicine is the creation of the Super virus. The swine flu, Marburg and Ebola virus are deadly and the Swine flu virus spreads quickly so now imagine if you mixed both characteristics, high contagious and deadly and you have the super virus. Viruses have the ability to transform and change quickly and moving from specie to specie at will.

A cow could get a virus which is not dangerous in humans and then spread it to its herder inside of whom, if the conditions are right, it can mutate into a strain that is particularly dangerous to human beings.

The Marburg and Ebola viruses are examples of this inter species transmission from monkey to human.

Furthermore there’s the worry of drug resistance. It’s ironic because the very medicine’s that are supposed to help us will in the long run create stronger, more drug resistant strains of viruses due to their ability to evolve.

The greatest danger lies in the fact that health care sectors are woefully unprepared. Health care in Uganda is underfunded and we’ve been lucky that the early stages of the current outbreaks were identified early.

Promoting our health care and giving it the support it needs will in the long run prepare us for any other outbreaks to come

In the end the fight against the super virus begins with us, encouraging hygiene, washing hands, cleaning your environment and having proper etiquette(when you sneeze or cough, cover your mouth).


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