Ebola. This one word seems to have the whole world in a panic.  The question on everyone’s mind is: Is the whole world headed for a serious outbreak?

If you have watched the news at all over the past three weeks, then you probably know that the Ebola virus has killed thousands of people in a short period of time.  The Ebola virus was first discovered in Congo in 1976. After a few years, scientists thought they had stopped the virus, but several outbreaks occurred again mostly in Africa. The current outbreak, which was probably the 38^th outbreak, began on December 6, 2013 when a 2-year-old died in a village called Meliandou in Guinea.

Symptoms of Ebola include fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. According to the World Health Organization, there have been 10 cases and 8 deaths in Nigeria, 1710 cases and 1,157 deaths in Guinea, 2,304 cases and 622 deaths in Sierra Leone, and 3,696 cases and 1,998 people dead in Liberia.  These death totals reveal that the disease takes the lives of 90% of those who contract it.  This fact alone is shocking and frightening.

The world may indeed be headed for a serious outbreak because, according to a News Channel 8 report from two weeks ago, two nurses in Texas contracted the disease after treating Liberian patient Thomas Duncan, who later died. It`s true hospitals are not professionally trained to treat patients with Ebola, but, unlike West Africa, at least we have all the tools to prevent other people from contracting the disease.

Ebola is unlike the HIV virus in that it can be transmitted more easily and creates a more volatile situation, but they both can spread easily and faster.

Diseases affect countries all around the world, so the possibility that the Ebola virus may spread like other viruses, even HIV, creates a sense of panic in people.  However, there are ways to avoid an outbreak if people educate themselves and take precautions.  We just have to be prudent and very careful.

To stop the virus from spreading we should not allow people to travel from West Africa to the United States because simply using a screening system at select U.S. airports will cost millions of dollars, and will not reveal every case. The screening system in place will definitely help detect people with Ebola. They will also have to leave their information (address, phone number and status) in case they start having symptoms later.

The whole world should start to do something right now before the death toll of Ebola in the affected countries increases, as will the number of American doctors or nurses who will get infected and possibly come back to the United States with the virus. As for us here in the United States, every hospital in all states should get ready to fight against Ebola because we never know what can happen.