WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) officials have warned that masturbation and sexual intercourse may hamper the fight against the eradication of the ebola virus disease (EVD) after indications that the recent recurrence in Sierra Leone might have caused by sex. 

Over the last few months, health officials have managed to end the raging EVD scourge that blighted Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, killing hundreds of people. However, lately, there has been a renewed outbreak in a village on Sierra Leone's northern border that led to the death of a 67-year-old woman late last month, 50 days after the previous confirmed case in the region. 

Consequently, WHO has advised all male ebola survivors to be tested three months after the onset of symptoms and then monthly until they know they have no risk of passing on the virus through their semen. Bruce Aylward, the head of the WHO’s Ebola Response, said that isolated flare-ups may point to a higher risk of transmission via the semen of male survivors than previously thought. 

Mr Aylward added: “It’s not the sex that is dangerous, it’s the semen that is dangerous. How people actually get exposed, in soiled linens or whatever, is not clear. 

“Transmission through semen may explain why a few cases continue to occur even though the outbreak has been almost completely eradicated by an intense international effort, recently bolstered by the deployment of a trial vaccine in Guinea and Sierra Leone. “The old advice of three months is no longer good, as the number of people with persistent virus in their semen is much greater than expected." 

He said transmission chains were considered to have been broken after 42 days with no new infections. However, Mr Aylward said that sexual transmission was obviously not a huge risk, because if it were we would have seen a lot more in the areas that were hardest hit at the beginning of this outbreak. 

According to Mr Aylward, however, sexual transmission could undermine the hope of ending the outbreak in West Africa by 2015. In a study to be published in the forthcoming New England Journal of Medicine, based on around 200 survivors, it was found that around half still had traces of the virus in their semen after six months and the risk might not only be from sex but also from masturbation.