Important to monitor health when you come home

Anna Karin Sjöblom has previous experience of working with ebolasjuka in Guinea in 2014, so when it was needed staff at the outbreak in the Congo hesitated she is not to take on the assignment as medical director at a ebolacenter.

"I've been working quite long on Doctors without borders, so for me it was not a difficult decision to take than to go to another country and work," she says.

Read more: Suspected case of ebola in Uppsala county, sweden

and dangerous disease that places considerable demands on the arrangements for hygiene and the code of conduct for the employees ' health. It is, inter alia, to immunize themselves against a variety of diseases, to only eat food prepared in the kitchen with good hygiene practice, to not have physical contact with others and wash your hands all the time.

– has a Lot to do to stay healthy and protect itself against other infections that can be confused with ebola and then increases the stress at all, " says Anna Karin Sjöblom.

In the Congo, has so far over 600 people have been infected by ebola in the outbreak that is the worst in the country's history. Anna Karin Sjöblom tells us that the work at the center, with the severely ill, both physically and mentally demanding. Many of the patients died, sometimes within the space of a few hours after they had arrived there.

Erik Esbjörnsson: Everything points toward that health care is just showing extra caution

It was heavy. But it is a reality in the medical care in other places, though not so often in this scale, " she says.

Read more: Vaccines are deployed in the fight against ebola

but is contagious only in the body of people who show symptoms. The first symptoms resembles the flu.

When Anna Karin Sjöblom came home to Sweden, she received instructions on how she should act in order not to spread the infection if she carried the virus:

– 21 days after having been in the project should monitor their health very carefully and take the temperature twice a day. If you start getting a fever or feel sick, you should isolate themselves and contact the health care.

"You are not allowed to be further away than four hours from a hospital," she says.

" No, it was I, not because we take the height in our work. But it is clear you think of it and the feel after the extra in the body how to feel.

– It is a very dangerous disease, and when you see the protective equipment that medical staff have on, this raises the fear in people. It is also one of the diseases that people can name and attach it to something very dangerous, " says Anna Karin Sjöblom.

" But it is above all the situation in the Congo that we should be worried about. Such a large outbreak in a place with a weak health care system, and an ongoing armed conflict limits the work to stop the outbreak.

Read more: A funeral like no other – tvååringen died of ebola

Link to the graphics

Link to the graphics