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The outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease continues to attract good media attention across the African continent. Daily news reports on high level conferences and seminars on fighting the disease has gradually made Ebola a household name in African cities. Ghana recently hosted a three-day emergency meeting of some 11 health ministers from the West African sub-region in its capital, Accra. At the conclusion of the meeting a-20 point consensus was reached in halting the spread of the deadly hemorrhagic fever which has been spreading in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since March 2014. The World Health Organization (WHO) says as of 23 June 2014, the number of cases reported was 635 out of which 399 died from the disease described as �threat to regional security.� Experts say the Ebola virus causes severe fever, muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea � and in some cases the shutting down of organs and unstoppable bleeding and can kill its victims within days. It is also said to be contagious even if the infected person dies and can be passed on by unprotected handling of infected corpses. While dossiers of information are available in cities on the disease, there appears to be a blackout among rural dwellers. A good number of rural folks on the continent know little or nothing about the disease, which animals in the wild such as antelopes, fruit bats, infected chimpanzees are said to harbour and spread. Some rural dwellers in Ghana have never heard about the word Ebola and assigned different meanings to it in view of the way it sounds in their local languages. A 34-year old hunter at Adaklu-Wumenu, Moses Nyadzor in the Adaklu District of the Volta Region of Ghana says Ebola is simply another political gimmick to prevent hunters and rural dwellers from enjoying bush meat and fruit bat to preserve them for tourism. �Our politicians want to take everything from us. This time it is bush meat..., hmm but if it is true that there is a disease like that, we don�t know about it. Nobody in our hunting group knows about this,� he said. Similar sentiments were expressed by some chiefs, opinion leaders and farmers at Hodzo, Takla, Aviepe, Anyiboboe-all rural communities in the Ho Municipal area where there are no healthcare facilities. The communities are between 15 and 20 kilometres away from Ho, the Volta Regional capital. The roads are very deplorable and could only be reached by foot, motorbikes and vehicles such as four wheel drives and those made for rugged terrains. The inhabitants are predominantly farmers and hunters with no access to healthcare facilities. Consequently, the people rely on herbalists and Traditional Birth Attendants for healthcare and maternal health services. Occasionally, they contract commercial motorbike operators to convey pregnant women with complications to Ho. Irrespective of these, the communities have one great asset-their communal way of living. The people share everything including bush meat. Grass cutter and fruit bats are delicacies for the youth, some of whom spend nights in the bush for a game for family, friends and the community. Funerals are another great event the people �celebrate� communally. Community undertakers specialise in using herbs to preserve dead bodies for days before burial. This is due to the absence of a morgue. Unfortunately, in the course of the preservation and funeral ceremony, hosts of people directly and indirectly have contact with fluids from dead bodies with possibilities of contracting diseases. The probability is higher in cases of ritual burials, predominant in far-flung communities. This is common across the continent. Agbohla Ndewu Gaxoede, a traditionalist in Benin, said dead bodies could be preserved locally to stay for months with daily �polishing.� This means, a hand or two would be in constant touch with the dead body until it is lowered into the grave. Adedze Kudzo, 56, an undertaker at Anyiboboe, a border community near Togo, said he had no knowledge of Ebola but believed his good works and the gods would protect him. �The gods of the community are with me. I used herbs and had taken care of bodies of people who died of HIV and AIDS and I don�t think your Ebola or whatever will disturb me,� he said. WHO says the outbreak of the Ebola was first recorded in 1976 simultaneously at Nzara, Sudan and Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo near the Ebola Village where the disease takes its name. It said more than 150 people who died in Guinea lived in remote forests near the Liberia and Sierra Leone borders. Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) told the Telegraph in UK that about 1,500 people who might have come into contact with infected patients had not been properly traced by authorities; this could probably be due to their difficulty to reach rural locations. These are indications that the virus is prevalent in rural areas and remote forests and not cities. Irrespective of these facts of villages and rural areas recording fatalities arising from the disease, policy makers and experts continue to concentrate efforts in the cities, a top-bottom approach, with little or no effort in rural communities where the people relate more regularly with animals. Health Ministers at the Ghana meeting emphasized surveillance and the need to tighten entry points across the borders. While this could be a measure to prevent cross border infections, thorough awareness creation needed to be done in rural areas across the Continent for effective campaign. At the moment, the rural folks do not know the symptoms of the disease and people with possible infections could be heading to prayer camps instead of health facilities. Close observation is good but sustained health community awareness and education should be paramount. Since the virus, at least for now, appears to come from the forest areas, rural dwellers must know how susceptible they are to the disease, its prevention and control measures being put in place by governments so they could adopt such disease preventive measures. Health ministries on the continent must act early, raise awareness and stimulate groups and individuals in rural and peri-urban areas to seek information and services in relation to the disease. Local news media, especially radio, television and posters should be used to create awareness. Chiefs and opinion leaders could also be sensitised to support community health nurses on campaign programmes. The campaigns must be decentralised so that the local assemblies would adopt strategies that best suit their localities for effective campaign. It must not be business as usual because it is impossible to say how far the epidemic could spread or begin to retreat as Keiji Fukuda, UN Agency's Assistant Director-General of Health Security, reportedly stated at the close of the Accra conference.