Ebola and Enterovirus, Both Spreading too Close to Home (Video)
Original article from: Fox 25 News posted on November 5, 2014
Two viruses: one from the jungles of Africa that has infected more than 10,000 people, half of them dead and another from right here in the US infecting more than 800 and linked to the deaths of four children this past fall. So where do these viruses come from and how are they spreading so close to home?
Dr. Mitchell Levy, Ashoka Mukpo’s father, said, “The word Ebola frightens all of us so when you hear your son say ‘Dad, I think I’m in trouble,’ and you realize he’s talking about Ebola, you can’t express what that makes you feel. Your heart sinks.”
Levy is a Brown University doctor who specializes in intensive and critical care. His son contracted Ebola while working as a cameraman in Liberia. His parents told our Heather Hegedus that they have not forgotten about the fear they felt when they heard the news.
“We had some very dark moments,” Mukpo’s mother Diana said.
And for good reason, this is the world’s worst-ever recorded outbreak of Ebola. The first case was recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976. Then in the late 90’s, a single episode was recorded in West Africa.
So why the epidemic now?
Dr. Ron Corley and Dr. Elke Muhlberger, Microbiology professors at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories Institue, believe it may have been a certain type of bat.