‘Cured Ebola victims can be re-infected’

A member of the World Health Organisation committee of experts on Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa, Prof. Victor Inem, has said cured Ebola victim could be re-infected with the same virus if fresh contact was made with carriers.



He stated this on Wednesday at a one-day train the trainer workshop on Ebola prevention and control organised by the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital for the medical stakeholders.

Speaking on the overview of the EVD Outbreak in West Africa Sub-Region, he said, “Even when victims of EVD have been cured, there are still possibilities that they can re-contract the virus if they do not avoid body fluids from sufferers and animals believed to be carriers of the virus.

“It is very possible for cured victims to re-contract the virus when he brings himself closer again with sufferers through sex, their other body fluids, eating of some animals which are reservoirs of the virus or through processes of burning victims.”

Inem cautioned that cured victims should distance themselves from sufferers, avoid sex or wear condoms.
He warned against embalmment and unnecessarily prolonged funeral services in parts of Nigeria where corpses were often touched or kissed over and over again.

Inem said the current panic should not be over-blown because there have been several epidemics since Influenza in 1918 and that “this Ebola epidemic will equally subside and go,” he said.

Earlier, the chief medical director of UCTH, Dr. Thomas Agan, said there was dire need to be on the alert even though the EVD was not in the state.

Agan commended the Federal Government for taking proactive measures, adding that the UCTH was taking all the necessary protective measures in case it was confronted with the challenge of the virus.