The virus may be acquired upon contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected animal (commonly monkeys or fruit bats). Spread through the air has not been documented in the natural environment. Fruit bats are believed to carry and spread the virus without being affected. Once human infection occurs, the disease may spread between people as well. Male survivors may be able to transmit the disease via semen for nearly two months. In order to make the diagnosis, typically other diseases with similar symptoms such as malaria, cholera and other viral hemorrhagic fevers are first excluded. To confirm the diagnosis blood samples are tested for viral antibodies, viral RNA, or the virus itself. Prevention includes decreasing the spread of disease from infected monkeys and pigs to humans. This may be done by checking such animals for infection and killing and properly disposing of the bodies if the disease is discovered. Properly cooking meat and wearing protective clothing when handling meat may also be helpful, as are wearing protective clothing and washing hands when around a person with the disease. Samples of bodily fluids and tissues from people with the disease should be handled with special caution.
How does Ebola virus spread?
The WHO says it is believed that fruit bats may be the natural host of the Ebola virus in Africa, passing on the virus to other animals.Humans contract Ebola through contact with the bodily fluids of infected animals or the bodily fluids of infected humans. MSF says that while the virus is believed to be able to survive for some days in liquid outside an infected organism, chlorine disinfection, heat, direct sunlight, soaps and detergents can kill it. MSF epidemiologist Kamiliny Kalahne said outbreaks usually spread in areas where hospitals have poor infection control and limited access to resources such as running water.
"People who become sick with it almost always know how they got sick: because they looked after someone in their family who was very sick -- who had diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding -- or because they were health staff who had a lot of contact with a sick patient," she said.
ABUJA, Nigeria - Nigeria has one more confirmed Ebola case, a nurse who was treating the Liberian-American who flew into the country with the disease and died of it last month, the health minister announced Monday.
The nurse tested positive for the Ebola virus over the weekend, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters in Abuja, the capital. That brings the total number of confirmed Ebola cases in Nigeria to 10, including two who have already died, the Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer and another nurse. The other eight cases are being treated in isolation in Lagos. All nine Nigerians were infected through direct contact with Sawyer, said Chukwu.
Nigerian health officials are working to prevent Ebola from spreading beyond those who had contact with Sawyer. Nigerian authorities have 177 primary and secondary contacts of Sawyer under surveillance, said Chukwu.
Ebola has killed 961 people in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Researchers believe they have now tracked down the start of the virus to a two-year-old boy from a remote village in Guinea, but it wasn't until March that the mystery disease was identified as Ebola. By then dozens had been infected. On the front line of the battle to contain the deadly virus sit health workers, who are bearing the brunt of it. Scores have died and a leader of Liberia's Heath Workers Association George Williams said they are growing increasingly angry.
Transmission
It is not entirely clear how Ebola is spread. EVD is believed to occur after an ebola virus is transmitted to an initial human by contact with an infected animal's body fluids.
Ebola virus spreads when the bodily fluids of an infected person comes into contact with the mucous membranes of a non-infected person. That means Ebola virus in fluids like blood, sweat or urine has to come in contact with your eyes, mouth, nostrils, ears, genital area or an open wound in order to infect you.
In other words, it takes a lot of contact to become infected with the virus, which is why many of the victims of the disease in West Africa are health care workers or family members caring for a sick relative. In Western hospitals, transmission is easily prevented with precautionary measures like face masks, gloves, protective gowns and isolation units.
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