Working as a doctor in Sierra Leone a couple of months ago I was showered in flattery. Not just me, all of us. A team of “selfless heroes”, out in the midst of the worst public health emergency in living memory, trying to assist the communities collapsing around us. After arriving back in the UK, I had more invitations than I could ever have taken up. The public thirst to hear first-hand what it’s like “over there” was unquenchable.

I write this on my journey back to Sierra Leone, where, despite all the pleas my colleagues and I made, we at Médecins Sans Frontières are still among very few responders on the ground. Big promises are still waiting to become realities. As I was preparing to leave I became aware of an uncomfortable shift in public opinion. Western introspective paranoia about Ebola suddenly reaching our shores was competing with sympathy for the plight of the actual people suffering. And me? I am no longer the selfless hero, but the selfish vector.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit selfish to go over there? You could end up spreading it back here.” I’d initially put the comment down to one misinformed individual. However, it has become clear that this is not an isolated opinion, but a growing consensus.

Stigma and infectious disease have walked hand in hand for years. As a medical student I wrote papers on HIV stigma and the efforts to curb it. Never did it occur to me that I would one day write about the stigma of healthcare workers doing a desperately needed job. Last time I returned to the UK, there were a few people who hesitated before shaking my hand, but always with a slightly embarrassed smile. I’m not expecting anyone to be smiling at me when I come home next time.

The media and public health information on the disease have been consistently confusing. On the one hand there are horror stories and heart-wrenching images flowing out of west Africa, where the focus has been on galvanising urgent action against a deadly disease that is spreading uncontrolled. On the other, the public at home are being told “don’t panic, there’s nothing to worry about here”. In essence both are true, but for many the context needed to differentiate between the west African situation and the western predicament is lacking.

This epidemic has graphically demonstrated the huge public health disparity that exists between the world’s richest nations and its poorest. The reasons include a dense mix of educational, economic, political, and gender-based differences; to name a few. This combination leaves the population less able to withstand an emergency of this kind. In a word, they were already far more vulnerable on day one of the epidemic than any western country would be.

Stories of increasing irrationality are being reported by returnees every day. Science and grounded knowledge appear to be taking a back seat to misplaced anxieties. As people who have sat face to face with Ebola, watched the people suffer and lived within the epidemic, we understand what it is like to be scared of an invisible threat. The reality is, though, that that threat does not exist in the west, and that includes from returning aid workers.

So in the interest of some basic health promotion, here are the facts. Again.

• Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with body fluids.

• An individual is only contagious when symptomatic and unwell, not during the incubation period.

• The virus itself is weak, surviving for only a short time outside the body, and can be eradicated with simple measures like soap, bleach, heat and sunlight.

We are living in frightening times, all of us. Knowledge is power, so let’s arm ourselves appropriately. Hysteria and paranoia will only be counter-productive in achieving the one thing that we all want: to end this epidemic.