Ebola screening in Sierra Leone. Yahoo/AP
"National Hero" Sheik Umar Khan, who has led the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone, has contracted the deadly disease. Yahoo/AP He has been credited with treating 100 of the diseases victims in his country. He was afraid of catching the disease, saying that "I cherish my life" but still continued to help. Ebola has killed 206 people in Sierra Leone and roughly 600 total in the region so far.
My Comment:
I'm hoping that Khan is among the 40% of people in this outbreak that survives. He clearly showed heroism, despite his completely justified fear of the disease he continued to see patients. He must have either gotten very unlucky or made an understandable mistake under considerable pressure to catch the disease. Ebola doesn't really spread through the air, for the most part, so he must have had an accident where he had contact with bodily fluids. Either way I really hope he survives.
Africa needs dedicated doctors like Khan to get this outbreak under control. I've been keeping track of this outbreak since it was first reported and it scares me about as much as all the wars going on right now combined. Ebola is about the worst, in terms of suffering and the sickening effect it has on the human body, viral disease I have read about and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I know that the chances of Ebola becoming a global pandemic are very, very low, and that the situation in Africa is worse due to cultural traditions, poor health care systems and a lack of supplies, but it is still very concerning. Even though the chances of Ebola mutating into an airborne or otherwise more easily spread form are low the longer this outbreak continues the more generations of evolution it gets through. I'm probably just being paranoid, but any disease that kills 60-90% of its victims makes me nervous.
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