Nigeria in partnership with WHO, UNICEF to contain EVD outbreak

Joining the global outlook that cooperation across borders is needed to contain the scourge of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), Nigeria is partnering with the World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), local authorities and international agencies for this purpose.

The partnership covers the areas of technical capacity, health facilities for isolation of EVD patients and other containment efforts in a bid to reduce the spread of the deadly disease in the country.

This development is coming 22 days after EVD came into the country through Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American financial consultant who was under surveillance in Liberia.

Nigeria has so far confirmed 10 cases as well as 177 primary and secondary contacts of the index case placed under surveillance or isolation.

Onyebuchi Chukwu, minister of health, who made this known to BusinessDay, singled out WHO and the CDC for their continuous support, partnership and capacity building of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

He said the Federal Ministry of Health was making arrangements to procure isolation tents to quicken the pace of providing isolation wards in all states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

According to the health minister, the issue of EVD outbreak was discussed as a substantive agenda during the recent West African Summit of the Authority of Heads of State and Government in Ghana, and Nigeria played its leading role in the sub-region with the only donation of $3.5 million humanitarian and capacity building aid to the three affected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, as well as West African Health Organisation (WAHO), and the ECOWAS Ebola Fund.

Experts believe the case fatality figures of EVD, which is put at 55 to 60 percent in West Africa, constitutes a major public health risk to other states.

Consequently, the US CDC said it was sending additional disease-control experts to the West African region within 30 days as some staff have completed their deployments. As at August 4, 2014, six staff were deployed to Guinea, 12 staff to Liberia, four to Nigeria and nine to Sierra Leone, with the deployment of more US CDC staff expected to continue until the outbreak is under control, an effort expected to take three to six months.

“In West Africa, CDC disease detectives are directing efforts to pinpoint cases and their contacts using a new tool developed at CDC. This Epi Info viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) application speeds up one of the most difficult parts of disease detection: finding everyone exposed to the virus,” CDC said in a statement.

“Other CDC experts will educate the general public about how to avoid Ebola infection; ensure that healthcare personnel strictly follow protocols that protect them against infection; strengthen laboratory aspects of the response; and improve communications among all stakeholders (the public, patients and their families, healthcare workers, governments and non-government organisations, and the media),” it said.

While 1,779 cases and 961 deaths have been recorded since the EVD outbreak began in Guinea in December 2013, a number of interventions have been through the laboratory and animal study phases of development. It is likely that ‘first in man’ studies will be conducted over the next 2-4 months. It is expected that the number of doses available for further study and/or deployment from end-2014 onwards will remain insufficient to meet demand.

The recent treatment of two American aid workers who had contracted Ebola virus in Liberia with experimental serum ZMapp by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. has raised questions about whether a drug that has never been tested and shown to be safe in people should be used in the outbreak, and, given the extremely limited amount of medicine available, if it is used, who should receive it.

Meanwhile, the WHO has convened a panel discussion of medical ethicists, scientific experts and lay people from affected countries to assess the role of experimental therapies in the Ebola outbreak response.

The disease has put a severe strain on health systems of affected states and governments have responded with a range of measures, including the declaration of national emergencies in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria following increasing confirmed cases of Ebola virus.

EVD has a case fatality rate of up to 90 percent with the infection transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected animals or people. Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care.

During an outbreak, those at higher risk of infection are health workers, family members and others in close contact with sick people and deceased patients. The outbreak can devastate families and communities. Experts, however, believe the infection can be controlled through the use of recommended protective measures in clinics and hospitals, at community gatherings, or at home.

Alexander Chiejina