- S’Korean varsity cancels Nigerians’ invitation over EVD scare
- Trial test of serum raises hope for cure
Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, who announced results of the tests on the two victims at a press conference yesterday in Abuja, said one of the new victims was a doctor who attended to the late Sawyer.
Sawyer, who was rushed to First Consultant Hospital in Lagos shortly on arrival at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, from Liberia, died a few days after he was placed on admission.
The scare of Ebola has also forced a South Korean university to rescind an invitation to three Nigerians to attend a conference in the Asian country while a group of South Korean medical volunteers called off a trip to West Africa amid growing concerns about the spread of the Ebola virus.
However, hope for a cure for the disease rose yesterday as doctors in the United States have begun a trial test of a serum which could reverse the damage done to a victim’s body system by the Ebola virus.
Chukwu, while giving an update on efforts being made by the Federal Government to curtail the spread of the Ebola virus in Nigeria, said: “We had previously briefed you last week on two people that attended the burial of the Liberian victim which after our test the result proved negative.
But it was revealed that more people attended the burial and as a result, we have eight persons out of the 70 under surveillance now quarantined.”
He added that as part of efforts to curb the spread of the disease, the border areas had been adequately strengthened with medical professionals who had been mandated to screen people coming in through international airports, land borders and other entery points.
The minister, however, said the borders were not closed but they would be if found necessary.
He added that the Federal Government had constituted a team to find the cure for Ebola with a former Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu, as a member.
Inaugurating the committee, Chukwu urged the members to be committed in performing the duty and urgently come out with possible cure or vaccine that will help in the treatment of Ebola virus
The minister also debunked the claim that bitter kola can cure the Ebola virus. According to him there is no scientific evidence that bitter Kola can cure Ebola virus.
On a report that a corpse brought into the country from Liberia has the virus, the minister said: “Samples have been taken from the corpse and the result would be available today.”
Chukwu, who reiterated that efforts were being made to identify more secondary contacts, stressed that no outbreak had been recorded yet outside Lagos and appealed to Nigerians to report any incident of the disease to the ministry for immediate action.
There was however an Ebola scare at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos yesterday as a passenger identified as Nwosu Nnaji was said to have been discovered to have contracted the disease. A source told New Telegraph that the victim arrived in the country aboard Arik Air at 1:15pm from a West African country.
The source said since the outbreak of the disease in Nigeria about two weeks ago, port health officials at the airport had deployed equipment, which they use to screen passengers arriving into the country, especially from other West African countries.
“I don’t specifically know where the plane came from, but the patient was discovered during the screening of inbound passengers by the port health officials at the airport. As at now, we don’t know what to do with him.
Some of the officials want him return to base while others are insisting that as a Nigerian, he has the right to arrive into the country,” he added.
Neither the spokesman for Arik Air, Mr. Banji Ola nor his counterpart at the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mr. Yakubu Dati, could be reached to comment on the claim.
Three Nigerian students have however been denied the opportunity to attend a conference in South Korea as the Duksung Women’s University in Seoul said in a statement that the school “politely withdrew” its invitation to them to attend the conference it is co-hosting with the United Nations.
The university took the decision following a plea one of its students posted on the country’s presidential office web site, asking for the cancellation of the event.
But the university said it was going ahead with the conference to be attended by students, including 28 from Africa, without their Nigerian counterparts.
However, a report yesterday by CNN said an American doctor stricken with the Ebola virus while in Liberia and brought to the United States for treatment in a special isolation ward is improving.
According to the report, three top secret, experimental vials stored at subzero temperatures were flown into Liberia last week in a last-ditch effort to save the American doctor and two American missionary workers who had contracted Ebola.
On July 22, Dr. Kent Brantly woke up feeling feverish. Fearing the worst, Brantly immediately isolated himself. Nancy Write-bol’s symptoms started three days later.
A rapid field blood test confirmed the infection in both of them after they had become ill with fever, vomiting and diarrhoea.
A representative from the National Institutes of Health contacted Samaritan’s Purse in Liberia and offered the experimental treatment, known as ZMapp, for the two patients, CNN said, quoting the source.
The drug was developed by the biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.
The patients were told that this treatment had never been tried before in a human being but had shown promise in small experiments with monkeys.
According to company documents, four monkeys infected with Ebola survived after being given the therapy within 24 hours after infection.
Two of four additional monkeys that started therapy within 48 hours after infection also survived.
One monkey that was not treated died within five days of exposure to the virus.
Brantly and Writebol were aware of the risk of taking a new, little understood treatment; informed consent was obtained from both Americans, according to two sources familiar with the care of the missionary workers.
In the monkeys, the experimental serum had been given within 48 hours of infection. Brantly didn’t receive it until he’d been sick for nine days.
ZMapp has not been approved for human use, and has not even gone through the clinical trial process, which is standard to prove the safety and efficacy of a medication.
The process by which the medication was made available to Brantly and Writebol is highly unusual and it may have fallen under the US Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” regulation, which allows access to investigational drugs outside clinical trials.
NEW TELEGRAPH.
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