I follow the African news every few days on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/africa/ which always has news I'm interested in. And for the last few months, ebola has been the headline news. I see that an ebola vaccine is being trialed in Mali on health workers .... where it is still possible that there could be cases appearing after a small child who had travelled there from Guinea died from the disease, and caused the many people she was in contact with to be quarantined.
One reason the disease has spread so quickly is that in parts of Africa, the customs concerned with dealing with deceased members of the family involves family members (and there can be a lot of them) touching, hugging, kissing the dead person, who may have been bleeding, sweating, vomiting etc. All and any bodily fluids are highly infectious. Clothing, mattresses, bedding etc., from the deceased person are another source of infection, and are kept by family members for re-use instead of being burned. Apart from person to person spread, it is most likely that this outbreak started by the eating of bush-meat, mainly large bats, which can carry the virus. So posters such as this are appearing in West Africa.
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Having re-started my blog with a serious subject, I must write some up-dates of news from PALUOC, what's been happening at HATW, and about a visit from Jennipher from Zambia !
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