Ebola is a Hong Kong film released in 1996 and directed by Yau Litao, which, although not expensive, eventually gained critical acclaim in the global film industry and even attracted a lot of attention in Japan.
In the mainland, due to the prevalence of pirated CDs, many people do not know what "Ebola" is, thinking that it is a virus fictional by the director. The depiction in the movie is extremely terrifying, and the patient will even bleed and suffer from all kinds of pain.
It wasn't until the Ebola outbreak in Africa in the 21st century that many older people suddenly realized that the description in the movie was true, and the tragic condition of the patient was exactly the same as depicted in the movie.
From the name of a river in southern Africa, to the outbreak of a virulent infectious disease in the 70s, to dozens of large-scale outbreaks in recent years, the Ebola virus has been threatening people's lives in black countries in central Africa such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali and other places.
Although the virus used to be only found in jungles, it has now spread to human-populated cities. In early 2014, there was a concentrated Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and WHO declared the area on Grade 1 Infectious Disease Alert.
At this critical juncture, China** took the lead in sending medical teams to Africa to provide assistance. After two years of hard work, "China Speed" finally defeated the epidemic and helped Sierra Leone and other countries survive the Ebola disaster, which has been widely praised by the international community.
So, just how terrible is the Ebola virus? How severe was the outbreak in 2014? What are the outstanding performances of the Chinese medical team in the fight against the epidemic?
Let's find out the answers to these questions.
Originally, it was believed that Africa had always been a barren land, unsuitable for human existence, so there was no strong civilization. In reality, however, Africa is extremely rich in products, especially in the central tropical regions, where the land is fertile and suitable for growing crops.
Since the beginning of the Age of Discovery, Europeans have come to West Africa, and they are amazed by the abundance of resources, fruit trees everywhere, and animals everywhere in the forests.
In the depths of the African continent, European settlers established a large number of strongholds, initially by the sea and then deep along rivers. They cultivated the land in the rainforest and multiplied the population.
However, the Europeans soon discovered that some colonies suddenly lost contact and no one showed up for months. When the colonists of the seashore or the new European settlers went to check on the area, they found that the city was already full of vultures, even bones, and that the people of one stronghold had died.
Europeans finally understood why blacks did not live in fertile land, but lived in arid desert areas or on the edge of rainforests. It turned out that there was an epidemic of virulent infectious diseases, viruses similar to what the ancient Chinese called "miasma", which could kill all humans who came into contact with them in just a few days.
Severe patients suffer from terrible symptoms, bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes, ears, and even vomiting of melted internal tissues. The WHO has documented patients vomiting their bowels alive, and the picture is like hell.
In 1976, the first Ebola outbreak in Congo claimed the lives of more than 300 people, severely affecting surrounding villages. Not only that, but even the rescue of the local church personnel were all killed, especially the doctors and nuns, leaving behind a large number of bleeding corpses, which had a huge impact on the local black people.
As a result, locals believe that the Bahra Ebola region is cursed, that the devil killed the men, and that they burned down the homes and morgues of the sick in an attempt to control the outbreak.
However, after the body fluids extracted by UN doctors from the deceased were sent to Europe, Belgian scientists discovered an previously unknown "earthworm-like" virus with a curved head like a question mark: the Ebola virus.
The virus was investigated by Europeans for a long time, and it was finally determined that it was transmitted from animals. The first people infected in the Bahra Ebola region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) fell ill from eating monkey meat, which is also found in animal meats such as bats, snakes, lizards and orangutans.
Scientists have found traces of the Ebola virus in bats, and while the virus poses no danger in bats, it can transform into a highly contagious and terrifying disease in humans.
Over the past half-century, there have been several outbreaks of the Ebola virus, in places like East Africa, West Africa and even the Philippines, and there have been four different forms of mutation.
Fortunately, because the Ebola virus is less contagious, can only be transmitted through body fluids, and its symptoms are too obvious to hide or miss, it is difficult for the disease to spread on a large scale, mainly affecting patients, family members and health care workers.
However, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa infected more than 23,000 people and nearly half of them died in the previous Ebola pandemic in 2014.
In the last month of 2013, a toddler in Equatorial Guinea suffered from a high fever that sparked a catastrophe. However, due to the superstition of the locals, he was not taken to the hospital but turned to a witch doctor for help.
The child, nicknamed "Patient Zero", did not get better at the witch doctor's prayers, but his condition deteriorated and he died a tragic death shortly after. His family buried him, thinking the disaster was over, but unaware that a bigger crisis was coming.
After the death of Patient 0, all of his family were infected, followed by their village and the local doctors. The well-known local witch doctor was not spared, and his patients died one after another.
The Ebola virus began its wild spread in West Africa.
The Confrontation Between Traditional Beliefs and Medical Conditions: Causes of Ebola Virus Transmission in West Africa A virus thought to be transmitted only through bodily fluids is widespread in West Africa.
The culprit behind this is not only the strange local customs, but also the backward medical level. Black people in parts of West Africa believe in traditional religions, and funeral customs are primitive and complex.
During the funeral, the body needs to be cleaned and even dissected, with the participation of loved ones throughout the process, which creates conditions for the spread of the virus. The medical conditions in these places are even more backward, many patients cannot find doctors, and the doctors they find do not dare to ** because of lack of knowledge and protective equipment.
Taking Liberia as an example, although the population exceeds 40 million, there are only 100 doctors and ** with status. Most people living in rural areas do not have access to health care, and their only remedy is to rely on herbs picked by witch doctors and the elderly.
Most of the local doctors are international aid doctors, including one of the "whistleblowers" of the epidemic, Chinese doctor Cao Guang. This clash of traditional beliefs and medical conditions has allowed the Ebola virus to spread rapidly in West Africa.
To change this, we need to step up medical assistance, improve the medical care and protective equipment of local doctors, and guide local people to change their traditional practices to prevent further spread of the virus.
In March 2014, Dr. Cao Guang came into contact with a patient with haemorrhagic fever in Equatorial Guinea, who was diagnosed with Ebola virus shortly after. Although Dr. Cao Guang had close contact with the patient, he survived 15 days of quarantine and immediately released information about the outbreak.
Since then, the local ** has sought assistance from the World Health Organization, and the international community is aware of the danger of this virus, and the ** rate of medical staff is extremely high, and once infected, the mortality rate is between 50%-90%.
However, under pressure, some Western countries have withdrawn their local doctors and even refused to send reinforcements to West Africa on the grounds of "diaspora safety", which has made the Ebola outbreak in West Africa even more serious.
By the summer of that year, the World Health Organization reported that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was out of control, with more than 1,600 infections and more than 887 deaths.
At a critical moment, China** stepped forward, announced its support for West Africa, and sent medical teams to the battlefield. The medical team was accompanied by medical supplies worth 600 million yuan, including medicines, medical equipment, experimental equipment, clothing and food.
The supplies arrived in West Africa in September 2014, at the same time as the first Chinese medical team arrived in central Sierra Leone, where the outbreak was most severe. Chinese medical staff have worked with international organizations to build mobile hospitals and begin to accept patients from all over the world who seek help.
Subsequently, Chinese doctors used the valuable experience of the SARS period in China to isolate and classify African patients**, and at the same time conducted virus chemistry studies to provide samples for the search for specific drugs or vaccines.
The Chinese medical team, composed of professionals from the PLA military hospitals and major domestic hospitals, has a total of 400 people, which is the largest single overseas medical team in the history of New China.
They work as medical workers in the West African countries of Liberia and Guinea and provide timely medical assistance to the local population. Thanks to the efforts of the Chinese, the "Cyprus-China Friendship Hospital" in the capital of Sierra Leone was completed in only one week, reaching the level of an infectious disease isolation hospital.
On the road to fighting the epidemic, the Chinese medical team not only has to fight the disease, but also faces the challenge of local feudal mentality. One of the reasons for the Ebola outbreak is precisely because of the fear of hospitals.
Therefore, Chinese doctors not only have to do their best to treat patients, but also shoulder the task of breaking down local feudal mentality and raising awareness of the importance of hospitals.
The Ebola mortality rate is extremely high, with more than half of the infected people living less than half a month, so the local misconception that "if you go to the hospital, you will die", they refuse to seek medical treatment or even flee the hospital, which exacerbates the spread of the virus.
Under these circumstances, Chinese doctors have proved to the local people that hospitals are not places of death, but places of hope for life.
Despite repeated calls from sick residents in Sierra Leone and Liberia** to go to hospitals**, black residents still refuse to go to hospitals, even if they are already infected with Ebola.
In addition, traditional funerals are banned in rural areas, as kissing and touching the deceased in traditional funerals may increase the risk of Ebola transmission. However, these appeals have not been heeded by the general population.
Eventually, the army had to be sent to supervise funerals in rural areas and to force the cremation of sick people in hopes of controlling the spread of Ebola to some extent.
While countries are working together to fight the pandemic, China's medical team is keenly aware of the importance of private medical forces and vaccine research and development. Although the shortage of medicines in West Africa can be alleviated through foreign aid, the shortage of doctors and ** cannot be solved by external support alone.
Therefore, the Chinese medical team has organized special training courses and trained thousands of temporary medical workers in West Africa, teaching them about the prevention of infectious diseases and integrating them into anti-epidemic activities.
In the later stages of the outbreak in West Africa, Chinese-trained doctors and ** have been able to respond independently and provide long-term services to the local healthcare system. In addition to China, dozens of countries such as the United States, Russia, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Cuba have also sent thousands of international doctors to work in West Africa.
Medical teams from all over the world worked together to bring the Ebola outbreak under control in West Africa.
In 2015, despite the Ebola pandemic, many infected people remained hidden in rural areas. With the help of an advanced information sharing system, the Chinese medical team has established an epidemic information database for Sierra Leone, and entered patient information into a computer to draw a map of the epidemic to help the local ** accurately locate the virus.
Inside the hospital, each isolation ward is equipped with a monitoring system, and three different isolation levels are used to separate patients from medical staff, and the isolation areas are independent of each other, effectively preventing cross-infection and infection of medical staff.
This system is considered to be the most suitable for the local situation, and has been well received by medical teams in various countries to assist Africa. In addition, China has established a virus laboratory, which has become a national haemorrhagic fever laboratory in Sierra Leone and an epidemic prevention training center in the region.
During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, China sent a team of more than 1,000 people to help fight the epidemic and forged deep friendship with the locals. Eventually, with the active promotion of China, this terrible epidemic was brought under control at the end of 2015.
On January 14, 2016, with the World Health Organization declaring the "end of the epidemic", this life-and-death battle with Ebola finally came to an end.