Caution with experimental Ebola therapy

At the moment there is no cure for the disease which, according to epidemiologists, kills its victims within 21 days. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has already designated the current outbreak and its rapid spread as a global health emergency. Over a thousand people have so far been killed since the latest outbreak just a […]

At the moment there is no cure for the disease which, according to epidemiologists, kills its victims within 21 days. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has already designated the current outbreak and its rapid spread as a global health emergency.
Over a thousand people have so far been killed since the latest outbreak just a couple of months ago, most of the fatalities occurring in Liberia, from where one of its nationals, Mr Patrick Sawyer, who was suffering from Ebola, boarded a plane to Nigeria last month. Mr Sawyer died a few days after arriving in Nigeria, at a clinic in Lagos.  He was the source of several infections that have taken place in Nigeria, with many deaths and hundreds under surveillance in quarantines.
The nature and effects of the Ebola outbreak, coupled with the fact that it does not have a cure, have understandably filled millions of people with dread.  This has led to many rumours about how it may be contained, with fatal consequences. Social media conversations of combination salt and hot water therapy able to ward off the Ebola disease, for instance, spread in Nigeria so fast that health authorities were forced to move quickly and dispel such nonsense. Too late for some though; excess salt intake by unsuspecting persons led to the death of a number of persons in Plateau State and the hospitalisation of many others there and in a number of other states.
In the midst of public apprehension concerning the nature of Ebola, and the constraints this has placed on personal interaction and travels, it is not a surprise that any prospect of an effective therapy would be greeted with acute interest.
Two American missionary workers who contracted the disease in their work in West Africa were flown back to the United States amidst tight security to be administered with an experimental vaccine known as Zmapp being developed there.  The treatment is a mixture of three monoclonal antibodies that attack proteins on the surface of the virus. Initial reports said one of the patients showed encouraging signs; but it has not been proven conclusively that it can cure Ebola. But that has not deterred requests for zmapp from all over the world. In Africa, only in Liberia has the US approved its use for the treatment of Ebola patients. The virus has surfaced in Dubai, where a Nigerian who was diagnosed with it has died. Many countries have imposed travel restrictions to traffic from the endemic regions. To make matters worse, the zmapp manufacturers say they have run out of stock.
Nigeria has reportedly requested for access to the zmapp.  Last week, the Federal Ministry of Health disclosed that another drug, described as Nano-Silver, apparently produced by a Nigerian in Diaspora, would be applied in the treatment of Ebola. This is where the tragedy of Ebola should not becloud the need to apply caution in the choice of therapy in ongoing efforts to contain it. Some controversy is already brewing between the officials of the Federal Ministry of Health and the US Food and Drugs Administration over claims of efficacy of Nano-Silver in the treatment of Ebola.  US officials consider such claims spurious, but as Professor Kamiyus Gamaliel, Chairman of the government’s Treatment Research Group Committee on the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) said in response, officials were ‘following laid down procedures for administering experimental drugs’.
Such debate is reassuring, but it would be useful to remember Nigeria’s recent history with experimental drugs, most recently the tragic episode in Kano involving the US drug giant Pfizer.  Apart from the fatalities from the experiment, hundreds of cases of deformities are a reminder of its debilitating consequences. The name Thalidomide may not ring a bell these days. But the German manufactured drug was the subject of widespread scandal in much of the western world when its effects of several grotesque birth defects haunted Europe through the 1950s and 1960s, before it was banned.
The current Ebola challenge should therefore never be another avenue by unscrupulous persons aided by government officials to make it a big payday at the expense of public health.