Things You Should Know About Ebola

These guideline are in accordance with guidelines from the centre for
Disease Control and the World Health Organisation, WHO.

* The suspected reservoirs for or carriers of Ebola are fruit bats.

* Transmission of Ebola virus to humans is thought to originate from
infected bats or primates that have become infected by bats.

* Undercooked infected bat and primate (bush) meat transmits the virus
to humans.

* Human to human transmission of Ebola virus is only achieved by
physical contact with a person who is acutely and gravely ill from the
Ebola virus or their body fluids.

* Transmission among humans is almost exclusively among caregiver
family members or health care workers tending to the very ill.

* The virus is easily killed by contact with soap, bleach, sunlight,
or drying. A washing machine will kill the virus in clothing saturated
with infected body fluids.

* A person can incubate the virus without symptoms for 2-21 days, the
average being 5-8 days before becoming ill. .Carriers of Ebola virus
ARE NOT CONTAGIOUS until they are acutely ill.

* Only when ill does the viral load express itself first in the blood
and then in other bodily fluids (to include vomit, feces, urine, chest
milk, semen and sweat).

* If you are walking around you are not infectious to others.

* There are documented cases from Kikwit, DRC of an Ebola outbreak in
a village that had the custom of children never touching an ill adult,
. Children living for days in small one room huts with parents who
died from Ebola did not become infected.

* You cannot contract Ebola virus by handling money, buying local
bread or swimming in a pool.

According to the World Health Organization, WHO, the Ebola epidemic
currently in West Africa could spread to other countries if not
properly controlled.

The WHO raised the death toll by 57 to 729 on Thursday, announcing
that 122 new cases had been detected between Thursday and Sunday last
week, bringing the total to more than 1,300 since the epidemic began
earlier this year.

It would be recalled that one case of the deadly Ebola virus was
detected in Nigeria last week via a Liberian businessman, Patrick
Sawyer, when he arrived Lagos International Airport already being
infected.

The Liberian man was later declared dead by the Lagos State health authorities.