Wellnesshealthy livingebola semensafe sex

Why Doctors Are Advising Ebola Survivors To Practice Safe Sex

Why Doctors Are Advising Ebola Survivors To Practice Safe Sex
By 

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

Ebola health care workers carry the body of a man suspected of dying from the Ebola virus in a small village Gbah on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, Friday, Dec. 5, 2014. A U.N. peacekeeper who contracted Ebola in Liberia will be flown to the Netherlands for treatment, a Dutch Health Ministry spokeswoman said Friday. (AP Photo/ Abbas Dulleh)
Ebola health care workers carry the body of a man suspected of dying from the Ebola virus in a small village Gbah on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, Friday, Dec. 5, 2014. A U.N. peacekeeper who contracted Ebola in Liberia will be flown to the Netherlands for treatment, a Dutch Health Ministry spokeswoman said Friday. (AP Photo/ Abbas Dulleh)

Male Ebola survivors should either abstain from sex or use a condom for at least three months after recovering from the virus, according to public health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Incredibly, the advice is based on a single recorded case: One recovering Ebola patient shed the virus in his semen for 91 days. Researchers from Medellin, Colombia published a brief summary of all the research to date on Ebola and semen in the journal Reproductive Sciences. In total, there were only four studies from 1977 to 2007 with any data at all on Ebola and male reproductive health.

The four studies had information about a total of six male Ebola survivors who continued to shed the virus in their semen from a range of 40 to 91 days. There isn't any evidence that someone has contracted Ebola by having unprotected sex with a male Ebola survivor. Still, despite the dearth of research on the subject, scientists are recommending that it’s better for Ebola survivors to be safe than sorry when it comes to their sexual health, and that of their partners.

"Despite the evident need to conduct more research, for now, health care professionals should strongly recommend sexual abstinence or condom-protected encounters for at least three months,” wrote the study authors.

It’s been one year since the first reported Ebola case, and there are now thousands of people who have survived the virus. Past outbreaks of the disease have shown that survivors face life-threatening stigma from other community members, according to the CDC. They could be struggling financially if they lost income to recover from the disease, and all of their possessions could have been destroyed by others in an effort to decontaminate a neighborhood, notes the CDC.

"The current Ebola Virus Disease outbreak is the longest and largest we have ever seen,” wrote the study authors in a press release. "Nonetheless, our results clearly demonstrate how much we ignore about it.” That may have to do with the fact that until 2014, Ebola was a relatively rare disease. Before the current outbreak, only about 2,486 people had ever contracted Ebola since 1976, when it was first discovered. From 2013 to 2014, 17,942 people have been infected, which has left 6,388 people dead.

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Before You Go

1
Ebola is highly infectious and even being in the same room as someone with the disease can put you at risk
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Not as far as we know. Ebola isn't contagious until symptoms begin, and it spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of patients. It is not, from what we know of the science so far, an airborne virus. So contact with the patient's sweat, blood, vomit, feces or semen could cause infection, and the body remains infectious after death. Much of the spread in west Africa has been attributed to the initial distrust of medical staff, leaving many to be treated at home by loved ones, poorly equipped medics catching the disease from patients, and the traditional burial rites involving manually washing of the dead body. From what we know already, you can't catch it from the air, you can't catch it from food, you can't catch it from water.
2
Cancelling all flights from west Africa would stop the spread of Ebola
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This actually has pretty serious implications. British Airways suspended its four-times-weekly flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone until the end of March, the only direct flight to the region from the UK. In practice, anyone can just change planes somewhere else and get to Britain from Europe, north Africa, or the Middle East. And aid agencies say that flight cancellations are hampering efforts to get the disease under control, they rely on commercial flights to get to the infected regions. Liberia's information minister, Lewis Brown, told the Telegraph this week that BA was putting more people in danger. "We need as many airlines coming in to this region as possible, because the cost of bringing in supplies and aid workers is becoming prohibitive," he told the Telegraph. "There just aren't enough seats on the planes. I can understand BA's initial reaction back in August, but they must remember this is a global fight now, not just a west African one, and we can't just be shut out." Christopher Stokes, director of MSF in Brussels, agreed: “Airlines have shut down many flights and the unintended consequence has been to slow and hamper the relief effort, paradoxically increasing the risk of this epidemic spreading across countries in west Africa first, then potentially elsewhere. We have to stop Ebola at source and this means we have to be able to go there.”
3
Temperature screening at airports is an effective way to stop those who have the disease from travelling
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The screening process is pretty porous, especially when individuals want to subvert it. Wake up on the morning of your flight, feel a bit hot, and you definitely don't want to be sent to an isolation booth for days and have to miss your flight. Take an ibuprofen and you can lower your temperature enough to get past the scanners. And if you suspect you have Ebola, you might be desperate to leave, seeing how much better the treatment success has been in western nations. And experts have warned that you cannot expect people to be honest about who they have had contact with. Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola victim who died in Texas, told officials he had not been in contact with anyone with the disease, but had in fact visited someone in the late stages of the virus, though he said he believed it was malaria. The extra screening that the US implemented since his death probably wouldn't have singled out Duncan when he arrived from hard-hit Liberia last month, because he had no symptoms while travelling.
4
Border staff should stop people coming in to the country who are at risk
LEON NEAL via Getty Images
They're not doctors, and it's a monumental task to train 23,500 people who work for the UK Border Agency how to correctly diagnose a complex disease, and spot it in the millions of people who come through British transport hubs. Public Health England has provided UK Border Force with advice on the assessment of an unwell patient on entry to UK, but they can't be expected to check everyone.
5
Screening at British airports should be implemented to stop unwell people coming in from affected areas
ASSOCIATED PRESS
As mentioned before, the UK, especially London, is a major transport hub. Unlike the US, most of those coming from west Africa will have crossed through Europe, so infected people could be coming from practically anywhere, not just flights directly from those countries. This would require the UK to screen every returning traveller, as people could return to the UK from an affected country through any port of entry. This would be huge numbers of low risk people, at vast, vast expense.
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