CDC confirms first case of Ebola in US
On Tuesday, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the first case of Ebola was diagnosed in Dallas, Texas. US doctors have contracted this disease before, but were all diagnosed in Africa and then transported to and treated in the United States. The unnamed patient returned from a trip to Liberia earlier this month, but just began to show signs of the deadly disease. He or she has been receiving treatment in isolation at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas since late last week, when the first symptoms began to show. Ebola has been a major killer in West Africa, killing over 3,000 people; however, because Ebola only becomes contagious at the onset of symptoms and is spread through close contact of bodily fluids, the CDC is not worried about any other cases of this disease in Texas.
The impact of this news spreads worldwide. Not only will fear spike in the United States of contracting the disease, but other established countries with no previous cases of Ebola will also see that they are not beyond this fatal disease's reach. I believe the CDC, however, when they say that they are not worried about a widespread epidemic in America, which is what has happened in West Africa. Because of the lack of sanitary resources, the countries like Liberia are more susceptible to the spread of any disease. In addition, different experimental treatments for Ebola, although not officially approved, have started to save many lives. Because the United States has seen the havoc Ebola wreaked in West Africa and since doctors and researchers have been preparing for this first case for many months, I am not worried about a mass outbreak.
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