LAKE BUNYONYI, Uganda — Samuel Muriisa thinks he is ready for Ebola, but he is not.

Mr. Muriisa, 74, is the most widely respected omushaho wekishaka, or traditional healer, in this area. He is aware — but only vaguely — that Ebola is raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose border is just 20 miles away.

“Let it stay in Congo,” he said. “We seldom see Congo people here. Let it not come.”

Jolly Twinomuhwezi, 60, one of his three wives who acts as his triage nurse, said she would send away anyone with bleeding eye sockets or fingernail beds, which she had heard were the chief Ebola symptoms.

She is dangerously wrong; most Ebola victims never hemorrhage, and in those that do, it is a late-stage symptom.

Medical experts worry that such combinations of misinformation and wishful thinking are common among traditional healers who, like it or not, are the front lines of rural African medicine.