RT: health experts warn against obvious dangers, such as eating pigs and fruit bats. The animals are a local delicacy, but are widely-known potential carriers of the disease. Bush meat is another cause for concern. These types of meat have now been banned – as are public funerals, where proximity to the body is often the cause for the infection of groups of people.
Embalming of bodies and the reuse of needles should be discouraged.
The virus is incredibly contagious. It can spread through contact with contaminated corpses – as in the case of the last outbreak involving four men – as well as direct contact with blood, feces, and sweat. It’s not hard to picture a nightmare scenario in a country prone to hot weather.
But the spread itself can come much more unexpectedly as well. All it takes is one infected plane passenger, and the prospects are truly harrowing: the local Health Ministry in Canada's Saskatchewan province put a man and his entire family in quarantine after he exhibited disturbing symptoms upon arrival from Africa by plane. It is important to note that EBOV and SUDV are known to be able to persist in the sperm of some survivors, which could give rise to secondary infections and disease via sexual intercourse.
While investigating an outbreak of simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV) in November 1989, an electron microscopist from USAMRIID discovered filoviruses similar in appearance to Ebola in tissue samples taken from crab-eating macaques in Hazleton Laboratories (now Covance). Blood samples were taken from 178 animal handlers during the incident. Of those, six animal handlers eventually seroconverted. On 12 March 2009, an unidentified 45-year-old scientist from Germany accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to inject Ebola into lab mice. She was given an experimental vaccine never before used on humans. Since the initial outbreak in Reston, Virginia, it has since been discovered in non-human primates throughout PA, Texas and Siena, Italy. In each case, the affected animals had been imported from a facility in the Philippines,[7]where the virus has also infected pigs.
Fossilized viruses that are closely related to ebolaviruses have been found in the genome of the Chinese hamster; given the lethal nature of Ebola, and since no approved vaccine or treatment is available, these viruses are classified as biosafety level 4 agents, as well as Category A bioterrorism agents with the potential to be weaponized for biological warfare.
Included among the populations confirmed to be affected are prisoners in Kabbale prison. One of the inmates suspected of infection escaped from medical isolation on the same day.
