Alert and response to the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic

3. Biosafety in case of suspected Ebola

3.7 Samples handling and transport

Handle each sample from a suspected VHF patient as if it were highly infectious!

In case of Ebola outbreak, non specialized laboratories’ contribution to the VHF diagnostics consists of collecting and organizing the safe transport of samples to a reference laboratory.

Les manipulations doivent être réduites au strict nécessaire vu le risque de contamination. S’il n’y a pas de contexte épidémique connu, en règle générale la suspicion de FHV/Ebola ne naît qu’après un traitement sans succès pour des raisons de fièvres aigues plus fréquentes.

In light of the high biohazard contamination risk, handling should be reduced to a strict minimum. In the absence of any known outbreak, generally speaking, suspicion of HVF/Ebola arises only after an unsuccessful treatment course against the most frequent causes of acute fevers.

In this case, samples collected even when Ebola is not suspected should be handled according to biosafety rules and usual good laboratory practices. Such standard precautions already significantly reduce contamination risk.