Viral hemorrhagic fever

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Viral hemorrhagic fever
Other names	viral haemorrhagic fever
Two nurses standing near Mayinga N'Seka, a nurse with Ebola virus disease in the 1976 outbreak in Zaire. N'Seka died a few days later due to severe internal hemorrhage.
Specialty	Infectious disease

Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) are a diverse group of diseases. Viral means a health problem caused by infection from a virus. Hemorrhagic means to bleed and fever means an unusually high body temperature. Both humans and non human animals can be infected. In the case of VHFs, bleeding and fever are common symptoms, and why they give the infection its common name.

There are five known families of RNA viruses which causes VHFs: Arenaviridae, Filoviridae, Flaviviridae, Hantaviridae, and Rhabdoviridae. Some VHFs are usually mild, such as nephropathia epidemica (within the family Hantaviridae). But some are usually severe and have a high death rate, such as Ebola virus (within the family Filoviridae). All VHFs can potentially cause severe blood loss, high fever, and death.