
This scanning electron microscope image shows the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV, in green), infecting a cell.

However, she said, "if you don't get treatment, there's a 100% possibility you will die." HIV "We have a vaccine against rabies, and we have antibodies that work against rabies, so if someone gets bitten by a rabid animal we can treat this person," she said. "It destroys the brain, it's a really, really bad disease," Muhlberger said. Once symptoms begin to show, death almost always follows the virus has a 99% fatality rate, according to the CDC. If they don't, the virus will damage the brain and nerves. Once a person is bitten, they must immediately get rabies vaccines or antibody treatments to prevent the disease from progressing.

Infection from this virus develops after a bite or scratch from an infected mammal. About 59,000 people die every year from the virus, according to a 2019 study in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (opens in new tab). Fred Murphy)Īlthough rabies vaccines for pets, which were introduced in the 1920s, helped to make the disease extremely rare in the developed world, this condition remains a serious problem in India and parts of Africa. This image of the rabies virus, taken through an electron microscope, shows particles of the virus itself, as well as the round structures called Negri bodies, which contain viral proteins. This vaccine helps to defend against the Zaire ebola virus and a global stockpile (opens in new tab) became available from January 2021. In December 2020, the Ervebo vaccine was approved by the U.S. During that time, it infected 28,652 people and claimed 11,325 lives (opens in new tab), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Transmission (CDC). The largest Ebola outbreak on record emerged in West Africa in early 2014 and took two years to resolve. But for the Bundibugyo strain, the human fatality rate is up to 25%, and it is up to 90% for the Zaire strain (opens in new tab). One strain, Ebola Reston, doesn't even make people sick, though it is deadly to other primates, according to Essential Human Virology (2016) (opens in new tab). The known strains vary dramatically in their deadliness, Elke Muhlberger, an Ebola virus expert and associate professor of microbiology at Boston University, told Live Science. Ebola is spread through contact with blood or other body fluids, or tissue from infected people or animals. In 1976, the first known Ebola outbreaks in humans struck simultaneously in the Republic of the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Microscopic image of an Ebola virus (Image credit: Shutterstock) (opens in new tab) This outbreak lasted for six weeks and, while there were 170 high-risk contacts, only one case was confirmed, according to Reuters (opens in new tab).


The case was a male from south-western Guinea, who developed a fever, headache, fatigue, abdominal pain and gingival hemorrhage before ultimately dying of the disease. The first known Marburg virus outbreak in West Africa was confirmed in August 2021. The case fatality rate in the first outbreak (1967) was 24%, but it was 83% in the 1998-2000 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 100% in the 2017 outbreak in Uganda, according to the WHO. Marburg virus symptoms are similar to Ebola in that both viruses can cause hemorrhagic fever, meaning that infected people develop high fevers, and bleeding throughout the body that can lead to shock, organ failure and death, according to Mayo Clinic (opens in new tab). (Image credit: ROGER HARRIS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images) (opens in new tab)Īccording to the World Health Organization (WHO) (opens in new tab), the Marburg virus (opens in new tab) was first identified by scientists in 1967, when small outbreaks occurred among lab workers in Germany who were exposed to infected monkeys imported from Uganda. The Marburg virus causes hemorrhagic fever in humans and non-human primates.
