Ebola: Male Survivors Advised to use Condom

Ebola Expert has warned that the Ebola Virus could remain alive in semen for up to 90days, increasing the danger of contamination through unprotected sex, even after the World Health Organization (WHO) declares an area free of the disease. 

The WHO is hoping to announce later this week that Nigeria and Senegal are free of Ebola after 42 days with no infections, the standard period for declaring an outbreak over, twice the maximum 21-day incubation period of the virus. “In a convalescent male, the virus can persist in semen for at least 70 days; one study suggests persistence for more than 90 days,” the WHO said in an information note on Monday.

“If we would apply the rule for double the time, that would be 180 days, six months. I think it (90 days) is probably a compromise, for practicality,” he told a news conference in Geneva. Ebola spreads via bodily fluids such as blood and saliva, but it has also been detected in breast milk and urine, as well as semen, the WHO added. 

“Certainly, the advice has to be for survivors to use a condom, to not have unprotected sex, for 90 days,” said Peter Piot, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a discoverer of Ebola in 1976.

More than 3,400 people are already known to have died in the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on record, the vast majority of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.