Prevention
Avoid traveling to areas of known outbreaks.
Wash your hands frequently.
Avoid bush meat or if you are an “addict”, “cook the thing like hell”.
Avoid contact with infected people.
Follow infection-control procedures.
Don't handle dead animal remains or human wastes haphazardly
Signs and symptoms
The disease is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.
People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory.
The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms is 2 to 21 days.
Diagnosis
Other diseases that should be ruled out before a diagnosis of EVD can be made include: malaria, typhoid fever, shigellosis, cholera, leptospirosis, plague, rickettsiosis, relapsing fever, meningitis, hepatitis and other viral haemorrhagic fevers.
Samples from patients are an extreme biohazard risk; testing should be conducted under maximum biological containment conditions.
