Ebola Survivor From Scotland Is Critically Ill

Fink, Sheri. "Ebola Survivor From Scotland Is Critically Ill." The New York Times. The New York Times, 14 Oct. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world/europe/scottish-nurse-who-had-ebola-is-back-in-hospital-and-critically-ill.html>.

The article I read Ebola Survivor From Scotland Is Critically Ill discusses the unknown long term effects Ebola has on a survivor. A nurse from Scotland that had recovered from Ebola 10 months ago is now critically ill. Scientists know that Ebola can last long periods of time in certain parts of the body like the eye. There are not many cases that have been reported of victims coming down with life threatening illness this long after being exposed to Ebola. In the past few days two people have been diagnosed with Ebola in West Africa which means that the Ebola outbreak is far from over. The nurse, Pauline Cafferkey, has shown signs of a severe central nervous system disorder and when they looked at her spinal fluid they found the Ebola virus. Her complications don’t match those of Ebola, but a new neurological syndrome. Stuart Nichol, chief of the viral special pathogens branch at the CDC, says that the recurrence of illness is likely caused by a high concentration of Ebola in the bloodstream that then is transported to parts of the body that the immune system has trouble reaching. Doctors have been having trouble figuring out if similar cases to this were caused by Ebola, or something else entirely. The experimental treatments that many patients went under could have played a role in not been able to completely rid the patient of the virus. Cafferkey’s doctors say that her condition does not pose a threat to other Ebola survivors and that they probably won’t experience similar symptoms.

This article shows us that the battle against Ebola does not end after the person infected is declared symptom free. Since we still do not know about the long term effects of Ebola it is hard to know if Pauline Cafferkey’s is just an isolated case, or if other survivors will start showing the same symptoms. Knowing that the ways in which people were treated for Ebola did not completely remove the virus from their bodies will help us in future treatment of patients. Although we do not hear about it often anymore, the battle against Ebola is still ongoing in Western Africa and this article reminds us of that. This article is not meant to scare people that we can never rid ourselves of Ebola, but that treatments for the virus are still developing. It’s important, still, to invest time and money into treatment for people in Western Africa because the effects of Ebola are still present.

I felt that this article was well written and generally easy to understand. I thought that the author could have explained some of the conditions that people with Ebola have in simpler terms because I did not always understand what the condition meant. I also would have liked more statistics about the rate of infection in Western Africa, and if it is still going down. I think the author did a good job of summarizing symptoms that other people had been showing after their initial treatment for Ebola. She also did a good job at explaining how people could start showing signs of Ebola a year later, and why some of the treatments we use won’t necessarily always work in the long term. The article was concise and no extraneous information was given. Overall it was a well written, interesting article.