because the biopsies are gonna be fixed in formalin.
And the formalin basically kills the virus.
You don't need to use infectious material to do the testing.
All of the testing is basically done after it's has been fixed.
It can be done in the open, and in any laboratory that does immunohistochemistry.
So what do we do with patients that have died?
Patients that are deceased?
Well, the handling should be kept to a minimum.
And as you know, that's one of the issues that has basically spread the disease so
much in the countries where the outbreak is going on right now.
It's that one of the rituals they had is as soon as the patient died,
they would bathe the body of the patient.
And then the people that had taken care of bathing the body,
they would bathe themselves with the water that had been used.
Well basically,
the people that died are the ones that have the highest amount of virus.
And then you bathe yourself with this amount of virus.
People then obviously, got infected just by doing that.
So one of the things that needed to be done,
is to basically stop that type of ritual.
And basically stop handling the patients.
It should be kept to a minimum.
And if the patient was intubated or if they put an intravenous needle to put
fluids in the body of this patient, they should keep the needles in place.
They should not be trying to take those things out or anything like that.
We don't want to take something out and create an aerosol.
And then you have to put that body in a plastic shroud.
And this plastic shroud has to be leak-proof and zipper.
And then you put the body in the bag, inside a second bag.
And in between those bags you put absorbent material with bleach.
So as you can see, even with a tube of blood,
as we talked about at the very beginning.
When you're taking that tube of blood and
you're sending it to the CDC for testing for
Ebola, or to the state, that you have to clean it and put it an a container.
And then clean the container, and put it into another container.
The same things happens with a whole body, that you have to
basically put the body without handling, no cleaning, just the body.
Put that into a bag, and then put it into another bag.
So taking many precautions so
that there's no leakage of material into the surrounding areas.
And then, one thing that should not be done is embalm,
which really hasn't been done in Africa.
They don't really embalm deceased people.
But they, in the States what they say is, cremate, which is the best way.
However, they don't have crematoriums so that's also a moot point, but
if a patient were to die here, we would cremate that body.
And the body needs to be buried as promptly as possible.
And handling it with the most, you know, the people that are handling that body.
Again, these are the most infectious patients.
So those bodies have to be handled with all the proper equipment.