Ebola: Male survivors warned to use condom

• WHO declares Nigeria, Senegal free of disease this
week
Sex could keep the Ebola epidemic alive even after the
World Health Organization (WHO) declares an area free
of the disease, one of the discoverers of the deadly virus
said yesterday.The WHO is hoping to announce later this
week that Nigeria and Senegal are free of Ebola after 42
days with no infections, the standard period for declaring
an outbreak over, twice the maximum 21-day incubation
period of the virus.
However, it appears the disease can last much longer in
semen. “In a convalescent male, the virus can persist in
semen for at least 70 days; one study suggests
persistence for more than 90 days,” the WHO said in an
information note on Monday.
“Certainly, the advice has to be for survivors to use a
condom, to not have unprotected sex, for 90 days,” said
Peter Piot, a professor at the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine and a discoverer of Ebola in 1976.
“If we would apply the rule for double the time, that
would be 180 days, six months. I think it (90 days) is
probably a compromise, for practicality,” he told a news
conference in Geneva. Ebola spreads via bodily fluids
such as blood and saliva, but it has also been detected
in breast milk and urine, as well as semen, the WHO
said. The whole live virus has never been isolated from
sweat, however.
More than 3,400 people are already known to have died
in the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on record, the vast
majority of them in three West African countries: Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Culled from: sunnewsonline