Rajasthan gets Centre alert on ebola virus

JAIPUR: While ebola virus outbreak has run out of control in west African nations, including Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, and threatening Nigeria, the state's health department too received instructions from the Centre to remain alert, on Friday. There are apprehensions that people travelling from the affected countries could bring the virus along with them.

Dr Aditya Atreya, joint director (rural health), health department, said, "Today we have received directions from the Centre on ebola virus. We will send the message across to all our chief medical health officers in the districts to remain alert."

The Centre has already issued advisory to airlines companies and airports in the state to remain alert and if cases where symptoms of ebola virus are detected, they should be brought to the notice of the health department so that spreading of the virus could be prevented.

He said that the incubation period of the disease is from two to 21 days. The facility for testing of samples of suspected cases has been made available at NIV, Pune.

The Centre's advisory points out that the virus could transmit from human to human through direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids.

Some symptoms of the ebola virus are fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function.