Skip to main content

Travel advice for Ebola affected locations : Check before you board the flight!!


  • Nonessential travel to Ebola affected countries like Guinea and Sierra Leone should be avoided.
  • If travelling is unavoidable, then the following points should be kept in mind-
  • Check what all is covered under your health insurance in case you get ill while on your trip. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends people travelling to Guinea to have full coverage for emergency medical evacuation.
  • Hygiene should be practiced carefully. Hands should be washed frequently with soap and water or using a hand sanitizer.
  • Any kind of contact with body or body fluids such as saliva, urine, vomit, sweat, faeces, semen and breast milk should be avoided.
  • Since contact with body fluids need to be avoided, hence any items that may have come in contact with infected person’s blood or body fluids should not be handled.
  • Participating in burial rituals or funerals should be avoided. No contact with dead bodies should be made.
  • Sexual transmission of Ebola is yet to be studied more deeply. Hence sexual contact with a man recovered from Ebola should be avoided. Contact with such person’s semen during oral, vaginal or anal sex should not be made. Condom should be used during sexual intercourse.
  • Contact with animals, especially bats and monkeys should be avoided. No contact with meat whether cooked or raw should be made.
  • Meat of wild animals which are hunted for food should not be eaten or handled.
  • Facilities in West Africa where treatment of Ebola patients is being carried on should be avoided to be visited
  • If on your visit, you get fever 4°F / 38°C or above or other Ebola symptoms such as severe headache, fatigue, diarrhoea, vomiting, stomach pain or any unexplained bruising / bleeding, you should immediately seek medical attention. Do not travel anywhere else after developing any such symptoms and avoid contact to other people while on your way to doctor.
  • Those who will be working in healthcare settings should wear personal protective equipment. Proper infection control and decontamination measures should be adopted.

Popular posts from this blog

Diagnosis of Ebola

It is very difficult to diagnose Ebola in a person who has been infected by the virus for only a few days. The reason is that the early symptoms like fever are non-specific and are often observed in patients with more common diseases like malaria and typhoid fever. However, once a person has been diagnosed with early symptoms of Ebola, the person should be isolated and it is very important to notify the public health authorities about the case. If a person has come in direct contact with: Bodily fluids or blood of an Ebola infected person who has died Items that were handled by an Ebola infected person and are contaminated with the blood or body fluids of the sick person Semen from a man who has just recovered from Ebola To confirm infection, samples from the patient can be taken and tested. For the symptoms to reach detectable levels, it may take up to three days after the onset of symptoms. Only after the onset of symptoms, most prominent being fever, is the Ebola virus detec...
Read more

Ebola virus Disease Progression

Ebola is a disease caused by the Ebola virus. Ebola virus belongs to the family Filoviridae . Filoviridae is the only virus family about which scientists know very less. Knowledge about the pathogenesis, the diseases caused by this virus family and the detailed virology is still very less. The recent epidemics have provided a considerable amount of understanding about the filoviruses. The first encounter of biomedical science with virus family Filoviridae took place in 1967 when Marburg virus appeared. Similar course of events were presaged by this virus for Ebola virus. On an average, the incubation period for Ebola Virus disease in humans lasts for 5-9 days though the overall incubation period of Ebola Virus disease in humans ranges from 2 to 21 days. There are three distinct phases in the course of the disease: Generalization phase, early organ phase, late organ phase or convalescence phase depending upon the result of the infection. Generalization phase : This phase begins wit...
Read more

Severity of Ebola

The first outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease took place in 1976 first in Sudan, then in Zaire. The disease can be fatal in majority of the cases. It is a viral fever which can get extremely severe in humans and primates. The virus affected around 284 people when it took place for the first time and it took toll over the lives of 53% of its victims. The second time it affected around 318 people and had the highest mortality rate among the viral diseases. The mortality rate was 88% in Zaire. The cause of such deadly disease could not be found as researchers kept trying to find the origin of the virus. In 1989, the third strain of disease, the Ebola Reston (EBOR) was identified for the first time. Monkeys that were imported from Reston were found to be infected with Ebola virus. Till now, Ebola has caused about 4493 deaths and the count of its victims is as high as 8998, according to World Health Organization (WHO). WHO still believes that the numbers can be 2.5 times the numbers that...
Read more