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When I was getting travel vaccinations recently, the nurse administering them said she had not heard of the recent Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I made no real effort to veil my scorn (hello, she is a nurse at a travel medicine clinic…) and wasted no time in telling her the truth.

She apparently lives under a rock when she isn’t working at Pitt St Medical Centre, but I have been receiving regular updates on the outbreak from my mum (incidentally, probably the only person who ever reads this column – hi Mum).

Indeed, a month or two ago nary a day went by without some Ebola-related article appearing in my inbox in link form or, if my mum was being particularly overzealous, as a .jpg, scanned freshly from the pages of that last bastion of journalistic integrity, the Christchurch Press.

Ebola was confirmed in Uganda on July 28 of this year, after villagers were dying in a remote western corner of the country. Ugandan officials were slow to investigate because the victims did not show the usual symptoms. Delays in confirming Ebola allowed the disease to spread to more villages deep in the western district of Kibale, and at least 16 Ugandans have died of the disease. Doctors Without Borders and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have been helping Ugandan officials to control the spread of the disease.

In the DRC, the Ebola death toll has gone from 14 to 31 since September 5. All of the cases are in Orientale Province in northeastern Congo, and are blamed on local consumption of dubious “bush meat”.

In conversations of the “would you rather die from … or from …” variety, Ebola haemorrhagic fever has always near at the top of my list. Symptoms include the usual gastrointestinal unpleasantries, plus backache, fever, headaches, rashes, bodily swelling, and increased sensitivity to pain. Ebola’s real kicker, though, is the ol’ bleeding from every orifice trick, in the manner of a low-budget horror movie’s special effects.

Best of all, there’s no vaccine, and there’s no cure. All doctors can do is give you intravenous fluids and hope for the best: you either pull through, or you don’t. And most fall into the latter category – up to 90% of cases, in fact.

No wonder my mother took great glee in ringing me up one day to assure me, in a voice quivering with poorly suppressed mirth, that my travel insurance included a zinc-lined coffin. That way my sullied corpse won’t infect those poor, unsuspecting souls charged with its safe delivery to back where it belongs in the Southern Hemisphere.

Happily, Uganda will actually be officially declared Ebola-free on October 4 of this year. No such luck for the DRC, which seems to have been having an even worse run of things recently than normal – Ebola deaths have doubled in the past week.