health

Although much remains unknown about Ebola virus and Ebola hemorrhagic
fever, scientists have begun to piece together some of the puzzle.
Ebola hemorrhagic fever was first identified in 1976 in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) and named for a river that flows
through that African nation. Part of the filovirus family, Ebola virus had
as of 2008 four known subtypes, each named for the location in which
it was discovered: Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Ivory Coast, and
Ebola-Reston. The Ebola-Reston virus, first detected in the United States
in 1989, was discovered in sick monkeys imported from the Philippines
to a research laboratory in Reston, Virginia. Although a few laboratory
workers later showed signs of the virus in their blood, none of them
became ill. The Reston strain was assumed to be harmless to humans.
The geographic locale of the virus is probably the rain forests of
Africa and Asia. Scientists think that the Ebola virus is animal-borne
(or zoonotic) and that it is passed to primates (monkeys and apes) and
humans by another animal. Decades after its identification, researchers
continued to search for the natural reservoir, or long-term animal host, of
the Ebola virus.