Foreign Policy: Ebola Lives on in Survivors’ Eyeballs and Testicles
“…There are at least 17,000 Ebola survivors … in West Africa, and many face … ruthless stigmatization. Since the beginning of the crisis, health professionals have pushed communities to reintegrate survivors. … But there’s now evidence that, when it comes to fear of Ebola survivors at least, the folk wisdom of Sierra Leone may have had it right. No one is advocating for discrimination, of course, but doctors and scientists have determined that some survivors still carry the active virus in the so-called immune-privileged pockets of their bodies — places like the inner eye or testes, where antigens can survive without immune system detection — and could potentially pass it on to others. Survivors, in other words, could potentially be the source of another full-blown outbreak…” (Baumgaertner, 7/12).