The 9 Deadliest Viruses on Earth
Original article from: The Gleaner posted on July 20, 2016
Humans have been battling viruses before our species had even evolved into its modern form. For some viral diseases, vaccines and antiviral drugs have allowed us to keep infections from spreading widely, and have helped sick people recover. For one disease ó smallpox ó we’ve been able to eradicate it, ridding the world of new cases.
However, as the 2015 Ebola outbreak demonstrated, we’re a long way from winning the fight against viruses.
The strain that drove the last epidemic, Ebola Zaire, killed up to 90 per cent of the people it infected, making it the most lethal member of the Ebola family. “It couldn’t be worse,” noted Elke Muhlberger, an Ebola-virus expert and associate professor of microbiology at Boston University, United States.
There are other viruses out there that are equally deadly, some even deadlier. Here are the nine worst killers, based on the likelihood that a person will die if they are infected, the number of people killed, and whether they represent a growing threat.
MARBURG VIRUS
Scientists identified Marburg virus in 1967 when small outbreaks occurred among lab workers in Germany who were exposed to infected monkeys imported from Uganda. Marburg virus is similar to Ebola in that both can cause hemorrhagic fever, meaning infected people develop high fevers and bleeding throughout the body that can lead to shock, organ failure and death.
The mortality rate in the first outbreak was 25 per cent, but it was more than 80 per cent in the 1998-2000 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as in the 2005 outbreak in Angola, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).