Heart-breaking.
I wonder if the generation of children who survive the outbreak will ever truly get over the trauma.
On the subject of bush meat I think we need to actually think this through logically as there appears to be a degree of hysteria attached to this as well.
In Africa people eat bush meat just the way hunters in other countries hunt and eat whatever edible birds and mammals frequent their local forests. Man has hunted since the dawn of time.
For those in Africa, eating bush meat is not a lifestyle choice - they are impoverished and require a source of protein in their diet.
For those living outside Africa as another FM described, it is like comfort food - food from home that reminds them of their childhood. So, whilst it is illegal, I do not think it is worthy of the degree of disgust and opprobrium expressed.
I am not keen on the idea of that Spanish cheese which contains live maggots and I think several 'food' items from the US are the stuff of nightmares. People have different tastes developed depending on where they grew up and what they are accustomed to eating.
Bush meat is sometimes infected with ebola - in the same way that chicken is sometimes infected with salmonella. Cooking kills the virus, so scrupulous hygiene is required when preparing it (just like chicken).
People keep bringing up 'all these Africans eating bush meat' as the cause of all these Ebola outbreaks and I get the impression that some think the
continuation of the current outbreak is due to in part to bush meat consumption. I do not think this is correct.
There have been possibly 30-40 separate outbreaks of Ebola since its' discovery in the mid 1970s. Some of them have been attributed to the preparation and eating of bush meat, some of them have not.
The current outbreak came from ONE child who did not eat any bush meat as far as we know, but may have come into contact with an infected animal carcass. Since then, all of the transmission has been human to human according to WHO - absolutely nothing to do with what people were eating.
If bush meat was as infected as some are suggesting on here and it is being imported into The Western world in the quantities described - please explain why we have not had
any Ebola outbreaks in America and Europe in all the years that immigrants from Africa have been living her?
Also, why hasn't the rural impoverished population of Africa been wiped out - there would have been far more outbreaks if all bushmeat was infected. In some years since Ebola was discovered, there have been no outbreaks recorded at all.
This page has a question about bushmeat:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/ebola-virus/Pages/Ebola-virus.aspx#bushmeat
Is there a risk of Ebola transmission from illegal bushmeat?
The risk to the UK population of acquiring Ebola virus from bushmeat is very low.
It is illegal to import bushmeat into the UK. Cooking will kill the virus, but there is some risk in handling raw bushmeat and the Food Standards Agency advice has always been that people should avoid illegal bushmeat as you can never be certain of its safety.
My best to her and Australia.
