Hope beyond Ebola doom…(Emergency 0800326524357)

The state has become ground zero in Nigeria’s experience with Ebola. Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American heavily being vilified by his fellow Liberians on web chat forums died there on July 25. Two weeks later, the virus claimed the first Nigerian life—a nurse who attended to Sawyer—in its onslaught on West Africa, and infected five more […]

The state has become ground zero in Nigeria’s experience with Ebola. Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American heavily being vilified by his fellow Liberians on web chat forums died there on July 25.
Two weeks later, the virus claimed the first Nigerian life—a nurse who attended to Sawyer—in its onslaught on West Africa, and infected five more people.
Panic about it has prompted questions, more recently, about how the virus behaves in air—is it airborne or can it just be aerosolised?
Health authorities from the health minister down at every Ebola briefing have tried to calm those fears.
Both are not the same, tweeted Ebola Alert. “Examples of airborne include influenza. If it were airborne…..that’s best not imagined.”
What is also unimaginable is that anyone can survive Ebola, considering the badly deserved horrifying press that has trailed the disease. But people do survive it, among them a seven-year-old Sierra Leonean, Vandy Jawad.
“Sierra Leone is now recording the highest number of new cases each week of all the West African countries affected, including Guinea and Liberia,” reflects Jo Dunlop, a UNICEF consultant based in Sierra Leone.
“What makes this outbreak unique though, is the increasing number of survivors – growing gradually to a current total of 143 people across Sierra Leone from the almost 500 people who have contracted it.”
A Guinean medical student also survived and her name changed to ‘Kadiatou the new born’—because I was given a second chance,” she said.
The federal government wants the same fate for the five people currently reported infected, though more are on quarantine and up to 70 under active surveillance.
The same day, the health ministry put a request across to the US, where the experimental drug Zmapp has been administered to two American doctors who contracted the virus in Liberia.
Dr. Kent Brantly was given the medication shortly after telling his doctors he thought he would die, CNN reported.
“Within an hour, doctors say his symptoms laboured breathing and a widespread rash  dramatically improved.”
Nancy Writebol, another missionary working with Samaritan’s Purse, received two doses of the medication and has also shown significant improvement, the network quoted sources as saying.
 “We have not received any response from them,” said health minister Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, concerning Nigeria’s request for the drug.
“We have made the request…we believe they will response to us, but we know that this is still an experimental drug, some of the data required is now being collected, but they are now using it on people,” the minister said.
More than 1,600 people across West Africa could need the drug, but patients have to give personal consent for the drug—never before used in humans—to be administered on them. And the World Health Organisation, which has been tallying cases and deaths since the start of the outbreak, was not involved.
A number of experimental drugs could be available from a $28 million, five-year collaboration between researchers from 15 institutions working to fight Ebola.
Last week, Nigeria renewed its interest in a 1999 work by Maurice Iwu, a professor of phamacognosy, which looked at the antiviral properties of flavonoids found in bitter kola.
The chemicals looked good in laboratory (in vitro) testing, but testing in humans (in vivo) has been inconclusive. A research group constituted last week will look into the bitter-kola angle, along with a number of claims swirling around.
The National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development, alongside Nigerian Institute for Medical Research and Iwu himself are on the research group.
But attention still hangs on Zmapp, made by a nine-staff firm in the US. It is essentially a cocktail of antibodies designed to fight and block specific proteins that can stop the virus from latching onto and entering cells, according to Heinz Feldmann, chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Laboratory of Virology in Hamilton, Montana.
The key is to find antibodies that can prevent viral infection, and to attack several points on the virus so that mutants won’t “escape” treatment, he said.
“What you want is a cocktail of antibodies that target different domains on the virus so escape is less likely in treatment,” he added.
That’s the hope. But so far the drug has been gaining attention. It came from exposing mice to the virus, injecting them with the protein and harvesting the antibodies produced inside the mice.
Next came the tobacco connection—producing proteins for treatment inside a tobacco plant. Genes for the antibodies required are fused to genes for a natural tobacco virus, officials explain. The tobacco plants are then infected with this new artificial virus, prompting the production of antibodies inside the plant.
In a process that takes weeks, the plant is eventually ground up and the antibody is extracted, goes the story from  ZMapp’s predecessor, MB-003, protected three of seven rhesus macaques in a study run in 2013 by Mapp and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
But Nigeria is balancing caution against desperation.
“We are not completely sure yet of its efficacy, we are not yet completely sure if there are side effects that will outweigh its benefits,” said Chukwu.
“If it’s an experimental drug, which means it is not being produced in commercial quantities, so obviously given the demand all over the world, maybe there will be challenges about supply but we await their formal response.”
“Where are our PhD holders in biology, virology, with big salary and unending demand for all comfort now that Ebola Virus paid us a visit,” tweeted David Roberts in response to the story on Thursday.
In the absence of a response on the miracle drug, officials will chase after cure claims around the country. But the doctors and nurses infected from contact with Sawyer remain quarantined. Their own doctors and nurses tend to them through layers and layers of personnel protective clothing required in barrier nursing—the method for dealing with deadly epidemics as Ebola. And they will be on a course of treatment with antibiotics and rehydration.
Managing the symptoms that come with Ebola promptly and effectively is so crucial: it could spell the difference between succumbing and surviving.