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, bosom milk,
Fluid 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 and try not to spread panic on
social media.
Thanks
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