An Overview of Newly Emerging Viral Plagues: The Hemorrhagic Fevers and a Newly Mysterious Suspect of Viral Disease, Acute Flaccid Paralysis

This chapter highlights three of the recently identified viruses: Lassa fever virus, Ebola virus, and hantavirus. All three are equally lethal infectious agents, but they are members of different viral families. They share the ability to cause hemorrhagic fever. Once infected with any of these viruses, the victim soon suffers profuse breaks in small blood vessels, causing blood to ooze from the skin, mouth, gastrointestinal tract, and rectum. Internally, blood flows into the pleural cavity where the lungs are located, into the pericardial cavity surrounding the heart, into the abdomen, and into organs like the liver, kidney, heart, spleen, and lungs. Eventually, this uncontrolled bleeding causes unconsciousness and death. There is currently no established vaccine to prevent these potential plagues, although several are in various stages of development, and an Ebola vaccine is currently undergoing trial in Africa. The chapter also considers a newly emerging and undefined but serious disease of children, which arose primarily in 2014. Based on clinical observations, the disease is identified by the signs and symptoms of acute flaccid myelitis.