Frequently Asked Questions on Ebola Virus Disease

September 8, 2014

How does a person contract Ebola?

"They usually acquire it from close contact with blood and body fluids, and that means someone coughs in your face, you handle a body or you look after someone and don't have ideal infection-control methods. You get the virus on your hands, you touch your nose, your mouth."

What symptoms do Ebola patients show?

"It looks like the flu: fever, headache, sore throat, muscle aches and pains. That's in the first few days. And then vomiting, diarrhea and the really serious part of the illness — that is the hemorrhage part — really doesn't occur until toward the end of the first week."

Once a patient is hemorrhaging, can he or she be saved?

"It all depends on the quality of medical care. Most Ebola outbreaks have occurred in villages, in mission hospitals where essentially they have a very poor level of health care and very poor infection control methods. The mortality rate in this outbreak ... is just a little under 60%. So you can survive. The better the care, the more likely you are to survive but there's no antibiotic or anti-viral agent to treat this disease."

Why has this outbreak been so bad?

"First, there's a lot of cross-border travel. Whereas most other outbreaks have been isolated in the middle of virtually nowhere. Also, people in these countries don't trust their governments. They don't believe in the existence of the infection. They hide their cases. If someone dies, they take the person's corpse home and treat it like any otherwise normal deceased person's body. And unfortunately the funeral procedures where you touch the body, and handle the body, markedly increases your risk." 

What do doctors in West Africa need to do to control the outbreak now?

"Mostly it's case finding. And that's the biggest problem. Someone comes in ill, they go back to their village and other people are infected but no one knows about it. The problem is we don't have enough personnel to follow up carefully; secondly, people are hiding cases. It's all about case finding, surveillance, making the diagnosis, isolating the individuals and using appropriate isolation procedures. That will help, but it's going to take a long time given what's going on in places like Sierra Leone and its neighboring countries."

What should people in West Africa do to protect themselves?

"The most important thing is to try and stay away from people who are ill. You won't get Ebola unless the individual you're in contact with is sick. So if someone is well, you're not going to get it. So you just need to have a heightened awareness that this is going on and wash your hands frequently, certainly before meals. [Ebola is spread through] direct contact, it's not someone walking into a room with someone with Ebola and getting the infection. Ebola generally is not aerosolized, meaning it doesn't go well into the air."

Source: Adapted fromhttp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ebola-virus-what-you-need-to-know-to-protect-yourself-1.2722334