When a Loved One Has Ebola, How Can You Reach Out without Touching?

November 4, 2014

(NPR) – Similar scenes play out with cruel regularity in West Africa as family members caring for loved ones suffering from Ebola weigh self-preservation against the basic human desire to touch and hold a loved one in mutual comfort and compassion. The Ebola virus is spread through contact with the blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids of those already ill from the disease. That makes the direct, hands-on contact we equate with tender loving care highly risky. In addition, because touching the body of someone who has died of Ebola can also transmit the disease, various traditional Liberian burial customs (which include washing and laying hands on the body) have had to be curtailed, which has led to further emotional anguish.