Ebola Virus spreading Accross Guinea, threatens the West Africa Hub

Ebola outbreak is reported in Conakry Guinea were over 60 persons have been reported to have died from this flesh eating virus which causes both internal and external bleeding. The disease has no known cure or vaccination with a high fatality rate close to about 90%.

The virus is transmitted by blood or other body fluids.The original source is likely to be an affected animal—a bat or sometimes a primate. The initial infection is through bush meat. If there are infected bats—or primates used as protein—in the process of butchering them, a person gets in contact with blood.

Ebola had never spread among humans in West Africa before February but five deaths being investigated in Liberia, one in Sierra Leone and others still being tested could bring the total in the epidemic to above 70.

The spread of Ebola, one of the most lethal infectious diseases known, has spooked nations with weak health care systems. In Guinea's southeast, home to all the confirmed cases, residents are avoiding large gatherings and prices in some markets have spiked as transporters avoid the area.

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in then-Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo. Scientists have identified the outbreak in Guinea as the virulent Zaire strain of the virus.

The virus causes a raging fever, headaches, muscle pain, conjunctivitis and weakness, before moving into more severe phases of causing vomiting, diarrhoea and unstoppable bleeding.