As 10th person tests positive to disease
Twenty two days after Nigeria recorded its first case of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), with another nurse being the 10th person to go down with the ailment, the Federal Government has intensified the search for dugs or vaccines that can cure the disease.So far, 177 primary and secondary contacts of Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian, who died from the disease in Lagos, have been placed under either surveillance or isolation, while 10 of them have developed the disease with two deaths already recorded.
Speaking at a joint press conference with the Ministers of Environment, Information, Interior and Special Duties, the Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, said the second nurse, who had been under surveillance, tested positive to Ebola at the weekend and had been moved to isolation.
The minister, who dismissed speculations that the United States treated Nigeria differently due to its refusal to provide the country with the ZMapp, serum drug, said the country was making efforts to get curative drugs and vaccines from willing countries or research agencies.
He said: “Those countries that treated victims of Ebola Virus Disease had the experimental vaccines. So, under their own country’s code, they went ahead to administer the vaccines on the patients with their consent. In our own case, our national health research ethic code permits that under contingencies or when there is an epidemic and there are candidate drugs or vaccines, they could be used with the consent of the patient.
“That being said, Nigeria is actually reaching out to agencies and countries, including the US government to see how some of these untried drugs that seem to hold some hope for treatment can be deployed in Nigeria. But what is important is that we have already established a mechanism through which we are managing the situation. Last week, the Federal Government inaugurated the Treatment and Research Committee on Ebola Virus Disease. So, we have a body that should be able to evaluate all these drugs and vaccines and advise the Federal Government.”
In a related development, the Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dr. Paul Orhii, said yesterday in Abuja that his agency was willing to test all drugs and vaccines that were claimed to cure or prevent the Ebola Virus Disease.
Orhii, who spoke during AIT’s morning show, Kakaaki, monitored in Abuja, however, warned that NAFDAC would not tolerate false claims of an EVD cure, saying only drugs approved by his agency would be administered on willing patients.
He said: “As you know, what we have are experimental drugs, which means these drugs have not passed the clinical level of testing. But we are willing to test drugs and vaccines from any part of the world. The first thing we will be testing for is the toxicity of the drug and like it was done in the US, it is only patients that agree to use the drugs that will be treated with them here in the country.
“But what we don’t want is the case that someone will announce that he has a cure for Ebola Virus Disease. If you have a drug from even within the country or any part of the world, where research has been ongoing, we are prepared to conduct tests on these drugs and if they are safe, patients, who after being informed that these drugs have not been tested clinically but are still willing will be given the drugs.”
Chukwu, who announced that the eight patients currently receiving treatment were responding well, restated that personal hygiene remained the only protection against the disease. This was just as he called on the public to ignore rumoured claims of a cure or phony home remedies such as the salt-water bath.
He assured that government was doing all it could to manage and contain the Ebola Virus Disease in the country, adding that those who were already infected with the disease were receiving the best of care.
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