It does not spread through air like the SARS virus that sent the world into a panic about 10 years ago. Nor is it like swine-flu, where every incoming aircraft from an infected region brings with it the immediate danger of transporting the HINI virus.
Yet public health experts caution that India be vigilant and send out an advisory on Ebola, as the virus takes its biggest toll in West Africa.
“West Africa’s outbreak is caused by the most lethal strain in the family of Ebola viruses,” Margaret Chan, World Health Organization (WHO) chief, said last week after assessing the outbreak with four West African Presidents.
In fact, the WHO’s emergency committee is to meet later this week to further assess if the Western Africa Ebola outbreak is a public health emergency of international concern and whether temporary measures need to be in place to curb its spread. Last week, the US Centres for Disease Control warned against non-essential travel to the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Advisories are in order, agrees Anurag Bhargava, a public health physician and epidemiologist. Indian doctors need to be made aware that infection by the Ebola virus could be a possibility in a patient showing high fever with rash, bleeding and multi-system dysfunction, especially if the person had returned from West Africa in the last three weeks.
Screening for infectionThe virus has a maximum three-week incubation period between infection and the symptoms showing up in the person, he explains. . While there is no need for panic, Ebola needs to be on the doctors’ watchlist, he says.
The disease spreads through close contact with an infected person, and through body fluids like blood and urine. Local doctors need to be advised on the Ebola virus’ modes of transmission, clinical and laboratory features and measures to prevent transmission in healthcare settings, he adds.
Manish Kakkar, a senior public health specialist with the Public Health Foundation of India, agrees on having greater vigilance at transit points such as airports where people come from affected countries. It is not about the numbers, but travellers should be screened and isolated if they show symptoms and are travelling from infected regions, he says.
The disease is a worry because of the “high case fatality”, says George Varghese, CMC Vellore’s professor of infectious diseases. And that means, if 100 were infected, about 80 to 90 could lose their lives, he explains. Screening of people who meet the risk criteria is important, he says, underlining the need for doctors to be alert about the incubation period of the virus.