Thursday, November 15, 2012

Don't eat monkeys

Is one of the pieces of advice being issued by the Ministry of Health following a new outbreak of Ebola.

The outbreak is actually quite close to where I'm living so I'll definitely be taking on this advice (and staying away from dead people).

Ebola outbreaks are always widely reported on internationally (and I only heard about the latest one because I was on the BBC website). While undoubtedly a scary virus given the very high death rate, the numbers can be quickly thrown out of proportion. There was another Ebola outbreak in Uganda earlier in the year that killed 16. This compares to the estimated 5 people killed daily in boda boda accidents. I'm not sure what the figures are, but I guarantee a lot more people are dying daily from untreated malaria, diarrhoea and malnutrition than by Ebola.

Nasty viruses actually seem pretty prevalent here (the is also an outbreak of another haemorrhagic virus, Marburg, at present). Advice for that one is to avoid bat caves...

In fact, any aliment seems to thrive here. I got a small cut on my leg from a school table falling on it four weeks ago. It was actually more like a scrape but it still isn't healed thanks to a superficial infection. I have also developed a nice fungal infection on my feet, charming I know.

The kids at school are like a hot house of infection too, most had a hacking cough when I was last there (which I also managed to acquire). Lice, worms and ringworm are common too. (In fact I have been told to deworm on departure as a precaution...)

The other thing that I have noticed with a lot of children is the extremely extended stomach on small children (almost like a pregnant belly). This is usually attributed to worms or malnutrition. It was also insightful to see the diseases that formed part of the school science curriculum: kwashiorkor (lack of protein) and marasmus (lack of carbohydrates) are two nutrition related diseases I'd never heard of which children here learn about (of course it may just be saying something about my ignorance).

Anyhow, I digress from the Ebola outbreak and avoiding eating monkeys. The moral of the post is that Ebola is bad but so are many other health and nutrition related issues facing the country.

1 comment:

  1. Definitely avoid those bat caves. And bat poo as well! Love the blog x

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