Thousands of Ebola survivors face severe pain, possible blindness

Thousands of people from West Africa who become infected with Ebola but survived are now suffering from chronic conditions like eye inflammation that could lead to blindness and severe joint pain, said health experts on Friday.

“We have 13,000 survivors in the three countries [Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone]”.

Talking during a five-day conference this week in Sierra Leone about Ebola survivors, a WHO representative, Anders Nordstorm said, ” The world has never seen such a large number of survivors from an Ebola outbreak.

“This is new, both from a medical and from a societal point of view”, he briefed reporters on telephone.

Daniel Bausch of the WHO’s medical care group on Ebola survivors stated about half of…

Survivors continue to suffer from persistent fatigue, headache, chronic joint pains as well as difficulty in concentrating months after the infection is cleared which prevent them from getting back to work.

A study now under way in Sierra Leone, with about 100 survivors, suggests that Ebola can persist in semen for “hundreds of days”, Bausch said, “but that data is preliminary and really needs to be validated”.

The WHO also reportedly said that Ebola survivors were subjected to less assessable but equally grave long-term problems, such as a spike in depression rates, post-traumatic stress disorder and social exclusion.

Problems with eyes including impaired vision, inflammation and in rare cases complete blindness have been reported in 25% of the Ebola survivors.

Previous outbreaks have been so small that it was hard to pin down the consequences faced by survivors, he noted, although “small numbers of case reports” have pinpointed the eye and joint problems. It is believed the problems with sight that are now being reported could be connected to the Ebola virus remaining in the eyes.

People in the west African country will now be allowed to attend public gatherings and take part in “general activities”, Koroma said.

According to the specialists, the outcome of the EVD outbreak in West Africa is not surprising as Ebola virus is unsafe and EVD could have long term impacts.