Ebola

We/They should quarantine anyone travelling from the area or put in flight restrictions.

Think Eyam plague Village in the Peak District in 1665. The plague arrived and the Vicar and all villagers decided to impound themselves in the village to stop the infection spreading. It took about a year before it subsided.

www.eyam-museum.org.uk/
An interesting small museum in a lovely Peak District village. Well worth a visit.

Info on TV just now saying it's not as contagious as appears, people in close contact with the already ill are catching it in Nigeria. Incubation is 1 to 21 days and we should not start panicking here. One person on a flight to UK from Nigeria was hospitalised for tests but given the all-clear. 80% of those who catch it have died.

Nellie - i agree - it is a very evocative and moving place to visit

The problem for the doctors where there is an outbreak is that it is hard to diagnose in the early stages, so containment can be difficult.
However the good news is that the virus is not airborne and is destroyed by simple detergents, so if you wash your hands you should be fine.
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100281820/the-curse-of-ebola/
Despite the scary title, this is a well-balanced article in the Telegraph.

You know, I've never been to Eyam, despite living near the Peak District for most of my adult life.

Tegan - do go, it's really worth it.

There was a guest on local radio this morning who seemed really exasperated at the way the press are dealing with this. As when has already said, this is not airborne, the person on the radio this morning (I didn't catch his name) said it is transferred by contact with blood and other bodily fluids. He also said that it can be contained by simple hygene.

If it can be contained by simple hygiene, why has the Doctor died ? he of all people would have been able to protect himself.

Harrigran I would suggest that in a lot of places in Africa many hospitals are very rudimentary.

I do not think our standards of infection control would work if there was no reliable supply of clean and treated hot and cold water at the turn of a tap. enough disposable aprons masks etc.

In a lot of places woman and children spend hours walking to wells or very poor and dirty streams to collect enough water to drink or cook with daily.

Never mind trying to be able to clean a small hospital or clinic well enough to keep the environment completely free from contamination.

My first job as a Staff Nurse was on an Isolation Ward which had a room kept permanently ready for what was known as a VHF - Viral Haemorrhagic Fever such as Lassa, Ebola or Marburg (there are others) Our Charge Nurse lived in an advanced state of hope mixed with panic that we would get such a patient and everyone who arrived with a PUO (pyrexia of unknown origin) would get banged up in this room and not allowed to see relatives and we would nurse them in total suits masks and gloves. This all turned out to be a total farce. I think there have been on only or two cases of anything like this in the UK and they were in London. Units such as the one I describe were disbanded long ago as they were thought unnecessary so anything infectious is just nursed in a side ward with appropriate precautions. Strange days though - what I saw most of was diarrhoea followed by vomit.

I am sure this will turn out to be nothing more than media hype again. Remember the bird flu saga? How we were all going to die from it and people cancelled their flights for fear of breathing it in in a confined space - and it isn't even an airborne disease! The media didn't print that bit though - can't imagine why

As has already been said, good hygiene protects us from a lot of things.

Many public toilets - where they are any - sometimes don't have soap, water and/or drying facilities available. Lorry drivers often find it difficult to wash their hands - and although the disease apparently can't be passed via parcels etc I still find it scary that our hygiene standards although higher than some countries are not as high as they could be. I don't think we should be complacent

If you are not able to wash your hands properly, then it would be best not to eat anything, prepare any food or put your fingers in your mouth until you can wash them properly.

From WHO

"Ebola spreads in the community through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids"

There's also some very good info from the Centre for Disease Control here:

www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html

That link would seem to say it's more infectious than we've been lead to believe Holly

I guess that poor doctor who died may have been infected through contact with a sick person's bodily fluid (vomit/saliva etc) and he may have had a small cut or scratch. In overcrowded and underfunded hospitals it is hard to maintain complete barrier care.

Well call me a bit of a wimp but I would not like to be travelling to certain countries and I do not think it is wise to think just because we have a good hygene standard in this country in comparison to say Nigeria we can be complacent given the nature and spread of the disease alongside the ease of connectivity between countries, including the UK.

The symptoms are similar to flu. Ebola is practically fatal if contracted by humans, with no vaccine or known cure if I am not mistaken.

I know it said that the culture of eating 'bush meat', a known carrier of the Ebola virus and the fact families are culturally required to wash and bury their dead so quickly is perhaps not going to mean much to us. Whilst Ebola is not an airborne transmitted virus, it is contagious if you come close enough to infected bodily fluid. This can be through vomit, sweat, kissing, diarrhoea etc.

I fully appreciate the chance of this happening is 'remote' but if you consider a scenario where an infected passenger on a plane is sweating, uses a tissue and leaves it for somebody to dispose of, that person could unwittingly be exposed. A passenger on a plane has diarrhoea and does not clean the toilet or door handles properly, a child may be the next user of the toilet and does not wash his/her hands correctly, that child could be exposed. Agreed all hypothetical but none the less that is the reality of how easy a virus is transmitted and Ebola is hardly a virus to mess with.

Ebola patients are difficult to diagnose allowing days of possible coughing over others. As for the doctor who died I do not believe for one moment he put himself in a compromising position but it proved to be too deadly a virus and he paid the ultimate price.

I am not thinking there will be an outbreak by the weekend in the UK. I am only saying I think it has to be accepted that there is a distinct possibility we could see the first case here given the spread of the horrible disease and the widely used air traffic into the UK from infected countries.

Hollydaze I am gobsmacked that you can dismiss an epidemic which has already killed 700+ people in Africa and to fight which $1billion dollars is being invested as mere"media hype". It may not be in Europe yet , please God we can take appropriate action but read the facts - this is not merely a Third World problem. And even if it were- don't you care?

If handwashing facilities are unavailable you a can use alcohol hand rub - keep a small one in your handbag/rucksack etc - handy for grandkids who want a snack while you're out and about. It does build up a sticky residue if used too many times so get a good handwash when you can.

Recently told in hospital that alcohol rub is not much better than useless. Hibiscrub was recommended.

TF Isopropyl alcohol is used routinely in clinical environments for disinfecting surfaces, so I don't think you need worry.
Hibiscrub is good but consists of chlorhexidine gluconate, and there is increasing concern about allergy.

But the ebola virus, like HIV, will be destroyed by ordinary household detergents, according to what I have read.

The handrub is for when you cant get near soap and water!

Doctors and nurses are never 100% protected. They can get needles stuck in them by accident for instance. I know a nurse who had an anxious wait for test results when this happened and the patient had hepatitis.