By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter Latest Infectious Disease News
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 12, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Doctors in the United States have a near-perfect record of treating Ebola patients, with only one out of nine patients losing their lives while under hospital care in this country.
And the last person under treatment for Ebola in the United States, New York physician Dr. Craig Spencer, was released from Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan Tuesday after being declared free of the virus.
Which begs the question -- is Ebola really as deadly and terrible a virus as many media reports have suggested?
In one sense, it is. Ebola is a virus that ravages the body, attacking all the major organs and causing terrible bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea. It can kill a person in any number of ways.
"I wouldn't say the virus is any less lethal," said Dr. Thomas Ksiazek, director of high containment laboratory operations for the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch. "I wouldn't want it, would you?"
But American doctors' success at treating Ebola victims has revealed that the virus can be regularly bested, through a combination of early detection and solid supportive care.
Until now, the Ebola virus has been a devastatingly effective killer because it has spread in developing countries -- primarily in Africa -- with underfunded and often ramshackle medical systems, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, clinical assistant professor of emergency and critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
In the current West African epidemic, Ebola has killed nearly 5,000 people and infected more than 13,200 individuals, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Past outbreaks in East Africa have had death rates as high as 90 percent.
"We've seen Ebola face-to-face with medicine in austere settings," said Adalja, who's also a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "Now we're seeing Ebola face-to-face with medicine in modern settings. It may not be as formidable here as it was there."
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