The Texas man who brought Ebola to the U.S. has caused an uproar of concern.
Physician’s Assistant Robert McRorie at the Kenai Medi Center was a U.S. Marine in Africa and although he never came into contact with any Ebola patients, he has been following the events of the African Ebola outbreak since it began.
McRorie: “The reason that it spread so quickly over there is because their burial habits are different than ours, like when someone dies, the hospital’s involved, we kind of go there, we say our goodbyes and they go the funeral home and there’s all this divide between us and actually prepping the body for burial, so actually most people get exposed and contract the virus from handling the person that died from Ebola.”
To contract Ebola, there must be direct contact with an Ebola patient or their bodily fluids.
McRorie: “The health care system there isn’t really designed to deal with body fluids so not everybody has rubber gloves, not everybody has just the basic precautions we take on every patient they don’t even have that so that’s why it’s such a big deal, but in America, it wouldn’t spread like it’s been spread over there.”
McRorie said if anyone were to contract Ebola, symptoms would be flu like but involve bleeding from any number of orifices and doctors would usually ask if they had traveled abroad recently.