Dakota Life: On the front lines of the Ebola outbreak

A South Dakota man traveled to the nation of Guinea in west Africa to fight ebola.

Lon Kightlinger, the state epidemiologist with the South Dakota Department of Health, went to Africa in November and December of 2015 — the tail end of the Ebola epidemic. He was chosen in part because he could speak French, the dominant language in the area.

Ebola has been known since the 1970s, when it emerged in the Congo. It was originally a bat virus but spread to humans.

Symptoms

The disease is caused by a virus that gives its victims a “hemorrhagic fever” — a fever accompanied by severe diarrhea, internal bleeding and extreme pain that causes people to collapse. Patients with ebola can bleed from their eyes, or seep blood. Then the organs fail. More than half the people who get it die.

Anyone who encounters an Ebola victim can also get the disease — but only by coming into contact with bodily fluids. It does not spread through the air, the way influenza does.  

In the past, outbreaks were limited — the disease was so deadly that people died from it before they had a chance to travel and spread the disease. But in late 2013, a huge outbreak started in the coastal African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Kightlinger said.

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