| Disease
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Findings
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| Ebola
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Presents with fever, chills vomiting, diarrhea, generalized pain or malaise, and sometimes internal and external bleeding, that follow an incubation period of 2-21 days.
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| Typhoid fever
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Presents with fever, headache, rash, gastrointestinal symptoms, with lymphadenopathy, relative bradycardia, cough and leucopenia and sometimes sore throat. Blood and stool culture can confirm the presence of the causative bacteria.
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| Malaria
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Presents with acute fever, headache and sometimes diarrhea (children). A blood smears must be examined for malaria parasites. The presence of parasites does not exclude a concurrent viral infection. An antimalarial should be prescribed as an empiric therapy.
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| Lassa fever
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Disease onset is usually gradual, with fever, sore throat, cough, pharyngitis, and facial edema in the later stages. Inflammation and exudation of the pharynx and conjunctiva are common.
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| Yellow fever and other Flaviviridae
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Present with hemorrhagic complications. Epidemiological investigation may reveal a pattern of disease transmission by an insect vector. Virus isolation and serological investigation serves to distinguish these viruses. Confirmed history of previous yellow fever vaccination will rule out yellow fever.
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| Shigellosis & other bacterial enteric infections
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Presents with diarrhea, possibly bloody, accompanied by fever, nausea, and sometimes toxemia, vomiting, cramps, and tenesmus. Stools contain blood and mucous in a typical case. A search for possible sites of bacterial infection, together with cultures and blood smears, should be made. Presence of leucocytosis distinguishes bacterial infections from viral infections.
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| Leukemia
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Cancer of the blood or bone marrow and is characterized by an abnormal proliferation (production by multiplication) of blood cells, usually white blood cells (leukocytes). It is part of the broad group of diseases called hematological neoplasms.
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| Tonsillitis
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Tonsillitis is characterized by signs of red, swollen tonsils which may have a purulent exudative coating of white patches (i.e. pus). In addition, there may be enlarged and tender neck cervical lymph nodes.
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| Pharyngitis
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Typically characterized by sore throat, but commonly accompanied by fever, headache, joint pain and muscle aches, skin rashes, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, diphtheria and common cold.
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| Adenovirus infections
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Commonly presents by a cold syndrome, pneumonia, croup and bronchitis.
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| Influenza
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Symptoms of influenza can start quite suddenly one to two days after infection. Usually the first symptoms are chills or a chilly sensation but fever is also common early in the infection, with body temperatures as high as 39 °C (approximately 103 °F). Many people are so ill that they are confined to bed for several days, with aches and pains throughout their bodies, which are worst in their backs and legs. Common symptoms of the flu such as fever, headaches, and fatigue come from the huge amounts of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines (such as interferon or tumor necrosis factor) produced from influenza-infected cells.[1] In contrast to the rhinovirus that causes the common cold, influenza does cause tissue damage, so symptoms are not entirely due to the inflammatory response.[2]
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| Others
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Leptospirosis, rheumatic fever, typhus, and mononucleosis can produce signs and symptoms that may be confused with Ebola in the early stages of infection.
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