To be a bit worried about possible Ebola case in Ireland?

[BitConcernedRightNow]

Story here

Apparently the victim was a man who has passed away. He had recently returned from Sierra Leone. It may turn out to be something else but it's really worrying.

MSF have been saying for a couple of weeks that this outbreak is out of control but no one seems to be doing very much. I know it's supposed to be low risk of transmission but it's still spreading

The first symptom at the stage the host is contagious is a debilitating headache that would be enough to keep the person in bed. Very soon their internal organs basically liquefy. Its very fast and it's unlikely they would still be up, about and infecting people once the illness has taken hold. There will always be exceptions to this but in the main you're very very unlikely to be sharing public space with a person physically ill with Ebola. They're just too Ill. While they're incubating the virus they're not contagious.

Ebola has spread in countries that (for many and varied reasons) do not have the resources for containment and surveillance. Seriously, do not worry.

I will avoid licking anyone for the time being Beer. It was a bad habit anyway

Thanks for the reassurance.

One Irish online news website reported last week that someone was suspected of having it and the Health Service denied it.

I remember when SARS was around and I wouldn't let DH's sister visit us as she was living in Canada and spent some time in Toronto before she came over. His family thought I was bonkers but I had a baby with severe asthma and I wasn't willing to take the chance.

Ebola really is last on the list for anyone outside West Africa to worry about. Really. Last of a million things!.

BreakingNews have his name and photo all over fb this morning. Unbelievable.

It is not that difficult to catch. I was reading a heart breaking story about a nurse who caught it from an unconfirmed patient. He wobbled getting off the bed, she caught his arm to steady him before gloving up. She died of Ebola days later.
Of course, we would have the basics like gloves over here, but some of the information we are being given is more comforting than accurate. This whole, too sick to travel thing, is just not true either. Patrick Sawyer shows this, as does one of the first cases who took a taxi across Guinea.
I do think good hygiene can arrest spread but I don't think there is any room for complacency with this virus. I don't think there is a health care system in the world that could cope well with a widespread outbreak.
That said, all these scares actually reassure me. They show the world is not being complacent. I just wish the concern extended to doing more for the countries currently suffering.

God, thanks for that........

Time will tell now in Ireland because this man was travelling between Dublin and Donegal after his return from Sierra Leone. My brother works for a telco in Dublin. If any of this man's colleagues or relatives in either Dublin or Donegal get it, it will say a lot about how it spreads in a western country.

If his partner or child gets it he had a young child.

When I say 'travelling' I mean travelled. He managed to get from Dublin to Donegal.

I hope he drove. I hope he didn't sit in costa coffee at Heuston station then wander round Easons, queue up at the cash point & touch all the buttons, wander in to the loos and sneeze.

Oh I'm sorry but I can't not worry a bit.

Remember Sawyer travelled on two planes symptomatic on at least one without spreading it across the world. It is very contagious in its final stages but prior to that it doesn't seem to be that contagious. Those that caught from him had close contact after the second flight and were mostly health workers.

Well obviously health care workers are at far more risk than the general public. I'd be far more concerned about flu. Whilst a few thousand deaths might seem a huge number, it's actually very small. It's not an awfully effective virus as viruses go. The huge fear of it is it's massive mortality rate in the few (comparatively) who do catch it.

I did say there would be exceptions to the case of too sick to travel. He's a very, very rare case. And it's not like he's caused a mass breakout is it?

Compare it to HIV and AIDS that did become a worldwide epidemic. HIV is symptomless for a long time, sometimes years. It was said that Ebola does to the body in ten days what HIV takes ten years to do. That's how one became an epidemic and one did not. Precisely because the onset of Ebola symptoms floors the victim too quickly for them to spread it about. Interestingly both viruses are thought to have originated in a fairly small area of Africa where sick monkeys were sent if they were considered too Ill to be transported around the world for pharmaceutical uses. Near the Sense islands.

Argh! Sese islands. Bloody tablet.

Things in Guinea/SL/Liberia are about as optimal as you can get for transmitting Ebola. Poor to non existent infection control, no healthcare system to speak of and a variety of practices that have actively increased the spread of the disease.

Even with all those things and no travel or trade restrictions and people travelling back and forth, in the 8 months since the first case only a relatively small number of people have been infected from a population of 20 million. It hasn't really made it out of 3 countries in one geographic area.

In the one case we know of where a symptomatic patient travelled out of the country. No-one on the 2 flights or the 4 airports he travelled through has caught it from him. As OYBBK those that were infected mostly had contact with his bodily fluids as HCP, initially without proper PPE because they had no idea he'd been in contact with Ebola and were treating him for malaria.

They are not out of the woods yet, but it is reasonably likely that in Nigeria they have managed to contain the outbreak as well as it has been contained elsewhere in Africa during previous outbreaks.

There's no reason at all to think that this poses a threat of a widespread outbreak in the UK or Ireland.

It is not that difficult to catch. I was reading a heart breaking story about a nurse who caught it from an unconfirmed patient. He wobbled getting off the bed, she caught his arm to steady him before gloving up. She died of Ebola days later.

But in the UK the patient would be in an isolation room, no one would enter the room ungloved/gowned/masked.

I haven't looked into this news story in depth, but it seems he arrived in Ireland unwell and was being treated for malaria, and he died at home at his parents house.
How come nobody treating him thought about the possibility of ebola? It must have been known by those who were treating him and his patents that he'd come firm Sierra Leone and was ill...how come that didn't immediately trigger isolation treatment and testing for ebola? Sounds like there has been some serious flaws here, even if it turns out he did not have ebola.

Parents not patents

I think the plan is to use the sort of air supply controlled isolation tents that we have in preparation for very nasty airborne illnesses i.e. SARS/MERS. It's total overkill for Ebola but very safe from a HCP point of view.

Even in the event of more than a few cases we are so, so far away from the conditions on the ground in Liberia and Sierra Leone at the moment it is unbelievable.

This might help put it into perspective.

And while Ebola can survive within a dead host the virus itself is easily killed. Simple hand washing will kill it. Any HCP who catches it has either ingested a bodily fluid - Ebola victims liquefy inside and expel it through every orifice which makes them so dangerous in the end stages - or has had to virus enter through a cut or scratch. Once Ebola is comfirmed the HCP will be wearing protective clothing. As above, it wasn't known that the patient had Ebola.

But in the UK the patient would be in an isolation room, no one would enter the room ungloved/gowned/masked.

Looking at the suspected Irish case, apparently not.

Well, reading a more recent story it doesn't sound like he had Ebola at all but that he had malaria. The local priest is apparently mystified at where the Ebola story has come from as it doesn't sound like the victim had those kinds of symptoms. No hazard warnings on the house or anything so it seems to all be a big headline grabber which is horrible for his wife and child :(

RIP Dessie and for your family.

It has just been confirmed that he DIDN'T have Ebola. His family are understandably angry at all the demands to know what he died of and are apparently furious that it seems to have been a leak from the hospital that started all the rumours :( I won't post any more as this must have been terrible for his family. Thanks to everyone who was reassuring on this thread.

A British man who has been confirmed as having Ebola is being flown to London from Sierra Leone. I think they are taking him to the Royal Free.