Sex and masturbation may hamper Ebola eradication efforts

The WHO has advised all male survivors of Ebola to be tested three months after the onset of symptoms and then monthly until they know they have no risk of passing on the virus through their semen.

Bruce Aylward, Head of the WHO’s Ebola Response, said on Thursday in Geneva that isolated flare-ups of Ebola may point to a higher risk of transmission via the semen of male survivors than previously thought.

“It’s not the sex that is dangerous; it’s the semen that is dangerous. How people actually get exposed, in soiled linens or whatever, is not clear.

“Transmission through semen may explain why a few cases continue to occur even though the outbreak has been almost completely eradicated by an intense international effort, recently bolstered by the deployment of a trial vaccine in Guinea and Sierra Leone,’’ he said.

Aylward said the latest flare-up, in a village on the northern border of Sierra Leone, followed the death of a 67-year-old woman late last month, 50 days after the previous confirmed case in the region.

He said transmission chains are considered to have been broken after 42 days with no new infections.

However, Aylward said that sexual transmission was “obviously not a huge risk, because if it were we would have seen a lot more in the areas that were hardest hit at the beginning of this outbreak.”

He said this could undermine the hope of ending the outbreak in West Africa by 2015.

A clinician said on condition of anonymity, that a forthcoming study in the New England Journal of Medicine, based on around 200 survivors, found that around half still had traces of the virus in their semen after six months.

“The old advice of three months is no longer good.

“The number of people with persistent virus in their semen is much greater than expected,” clinician said.

The clinician added that the risk might not only be from sex but also from masturbation.

50 People Quarantinee After New Ebola Death in S. Leone

Fifty people have been placed in quarantine in northern Sierra Leone after the death of a middle-aged woman from the Ebola virus, medical officials said Tuesday, in a setback for the country’s bid to gain Ebola-free status.

“We are conducting an epidemiological investigation to trace the extent of the transmission” as the woman ho died was sick for 5-10 days without the authorities being alerted, Ibrahim Sesay of the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC) told a local radio station.

Given the 50 people identified as at high-risk “we should not be surprised if we see new cases coming out,” from the new case

identified in the village of Sella Kafta in the northern district of Kambia, he said.

“Ebola is like the main actor in an horror film. Defeat the actor and he is likely to get up again,” Sesay added.

There had been celebratory scenes last week when the country’s last known Ebola patient was released from hospital in the central city of Makeni after being cured of the virus, raising hopes the west African nation may finally have beaten the devastating epidemic.

The latest victim had not travelled to either Liberia or Guinea, two other countries also blindsided by the worst outbreak of Ebola in history, which has killed some 11,300 people since first emerging in December 2013 in Guinea.

News of the new Ebola death came as a new school year got underway Monday, with measures in place to try prevent the spread of the virus.

Children’s temperatures were being checked at many schools, and students were directed towards buckets of chlorine to wash their hands.

Schools were closed for more than eight months at the height of the Ebola outbreak.

Reports from Kambia said community leaders and residents remained “in a state of shock” over the news.

An elder and long time resident in Sella Kafta, Sampha Mansaray told AFP by phone that “the community is in mourning over the death.”

“We have been thorough in observing all restrictions to keep Ebola out of our community but we have now failed the rest of the country by being the place that has halted the countdown” towards Ebola-free status, the 60-year-old farmer lamented.