Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) represent a collection of illnesses caused by several distinct viral families. While some types of hemorrhagic fever viruses can cause relatively mild illnesses, many of these viruses cause life-threatening diseases. In general, the term "viral hemorrhagic fever" describes a severe multisystem syndrome. Typical for this syndrome is a systemic damage of vascular system often accompanied by hemorrhages.Ebola is a type of VHF, along with Marburg, Lassa, dengue, Rift Valley, and yellow fever. VHFs are RNA viruses whose survival is dependent on animal or insect hosts. Ebola hemorrhagic fever initially makes the leap from an animal reservoir to a human, and can then be passed from human to human through direct contact.In the autumn and winter of 2014 every day professional and popular press published new information about Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It was not just data related to the number of patients, new recommendations and protocols, information about testing of potential vaccines, but also theoretical works that tried to analyze the situation and data.

Keywords: textviral hemorrhagic fevers; Lassa virus; Junin virus; Machupo virus; Omsk hemorrhagic fever; Kyasanur forest fever; yellow fever, dengue; Ebola; Marburg; Rift Valley fever virus; hantaviruses