US STATE DEPARTMENT EBOLA ALERT

In order to help our Embassy Community better understand some of the
key points about the Ebola virus we have consulted with our medical
specialists at the U S State Department and assembled this list of
bullet points worded in plain language for easy comprehension. Our
medical specialists remind everyone that they should be following the
guideline from the center for Disease Control and the World Health
Organisation.

* The suspected reservoirs for Ebola are fruit bats.

* Transmission 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 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. THEY 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,
breast 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 by handling money, buying local bread or
swimming in a pool.

* There is no medical reason to stop flights, close borders, restrict
travel or close embassies, businesses or schools.

* As always practice good hand washing techniques, but you will not
contract Ebola if you do not touch a dying person.

US EMBASSY
Please share this information with your friends and families to try
and stop panic.