United
State Embassy - 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 Organization.
• 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. http://www.thenewrisingsun.net/ViewSingleArticle.php?ArticleID=3801 ..This is not on U.S.Embassy website THAT I CAN FIND..
