7 Steps To Ensure Ebola Doesn't Disrupt Your International Travel

Is it safe to travel? Should we cancel our long-planned family safari in Botswana? Can I get Ebola from an airplane seat? For the last two decades, I've been helping people find the best doctors, treatments and medical information -- and I've never seen the kind of health panic among clients like I do now. (Yes, No and Extraordinarily unlikely are the short answers to these questions, by the way). For expert advice, I checked in with Dr. Michael Callahan, an associate physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Callahan ran one of the Department of Defense programs for mass-casualty infections; he's personally cared for over 400 Ebola patients; and he recently returned from building an Ebola unit in Monrovia. "Sitting directly next to somebody on an airplane who's sneezing is unpleasant and might pose a health risk," Callahan says. "But not for Ebola, because Ebola patients aren't sneezing. Even at the onset of fever, Ebola patients are minimally infectious. By the time they are a danger to others, they are very, very sick. They're making lots of trips to the bathroom, they've been throwing up and they're dehydrated. They're not the people that are on your aircraft." In fact, you're more apt to get food poisoning, malaria or dengue while abroad. And that's your real problem because the initial symptoms (fever, vomiting, diarrhea) of many of the most common preventable infections mimic those of Ebola. Five airp...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news