Liberia ponders on who should get Ebola drug

Monrovia - Liberia faced is faced with an
excruciating choice deciding which handful of
Ebola patients will receive an experimental drug
that could prove either life-saving or life-
threatening.
ZMapp, the untested Ebola drug, arrived in the
West African country late Wednesday. Assistant
Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said three or
four people would begin getting it Thursday.
The government had previously said two
doctors would receive the treatment, but it was
unclear who else would.
Also read: ZMapp Ebola drug stock finished
These are the last known doses of ZMapp left
in the world. The San Diego-based company
that developed it has said it will take months to
build up even a modest supply.
An Ebola outbreak that began in Guinea and
spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria has
killed more than 1,060 of the 1,970 people
sickened since it was detected in March,
according to the World Health Organization. It
has overwhelmed the already strained health
systems in West Africa and sparked an
international debate over the ethics of giving
drugs that have not yet been tested for safety
or efficacy to the sick.
The charity group Doctors Without Borders,
which is running many of the Ebola treatment
centers and whose staff have tussled with
whether to provide ZMapp, said such choices
present "an impossible dilemma."
Now Liberian officials are facing those
questions.
"The criteria of selection is difficult, but it is
going to be done," said Dr. Moses Massaquoi,
who helped Liberia obtain the drug from Mapp
Biopharmaceutical. "We are going to look at
how critical people are. We are definitely going
to be focusing on medical staff."
Massaquoi said people who were past the
"critical phase" and looked likely to survive
would not be treated with it.
In this outbreak, over 50 percent of those
getting Ebola have died, according to the U.N.
health agency.
So far, ZMapp has been given to three people:
two Americans and a Spaniard priest. The
Americans are improving but it is unclear what
role the drug has played. The Spaniard died
earlier this week in Madrid.
Nigeria announced Thursday that one more
person has been infected with Ebola, bringing
the country's number of cases to 11. Health
Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the latest
patient is a doctor who helped treat the first
Ebola case in the country, Liberian-American
Patrick Sawyer who flew in last month with the
virus and died July 25.

US Embassy in Nigeria remains open in spite of Ebola

Lagos - The United States Embassy in Nigeria will
remain open despite the outbreak of the deadly
Ebola virus.
The Bureau of African Affairs stated that in
addition, at this time, no Ebola-related travel
restrictions had been issued by the State
Department for Guinea, Nigeria, or Sierra Leone.
Also Read: ZMapp Ebola drug stock finished
"Our Embassies remain open and will continue
business as usual in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and
Sierra Leone," the Bureau stated.
"We remain deeply committed to supporting
regional and international efforts to deliver health
care as well as contain and control the
transmission of the Ebola virus," it further stated.
Also Read: ECOWAS official dies from Ebola in
Nigeria
According to the Bureau of African Affairs, the US
Government was monitoring the situation very
closely and would update its response and travel
recommendations as needed.
"The United States is working with the World
Health Organization and other international
partners to help West African governments
respond to and contain the outbreak of the Ebola
virus as quickly as possible."

UN Chief: Avoid Ebola Panic And Fear

New York - Urging governments to avoid panic
and fear, UN chief Ban Ki-moon announced plans
on Tuesday to step up the global response to the
Ebola outbreak and bring it under control.
Ban appointed British physician David Nabarro to
be the UN coordinator for Ebola, tasked with
overseeing the world body's strategy as the
death toll from the outbreak topped 1 000.
"We need to avoid panic and fear. Ebola can be
prevented," Ban told reporters at UN
headquarters in New York.
"With resources, knowledge, early action and will,
people can survive the disease.
"Ebola has been successfully brought under
control elsewhere and we can do it here too."
Also Read: ZMapp Ebola drug stock finished
The epidemic that began in Guinea, and spread to
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, has been
described as the worst since Ebola was first
discovered four decades ago.
It has killed 1 013 people, including a Spanish
priest who on Tuesday became the first European
to succumb to the outbreak that began earlier this
year. An American woman infected in Liberia is
recovering in a US hospital.
"In the days ahead, the UN system will further
strengthen the way we are dealing with the
outbreak," the UN secretary-general said.
Also Read: ECOWAS official dies from Ebola in
Nigeria
He cited the urgent need to address the shortage
of doctors, nurses and equipment, including
protective clothing and isolation tents, especially
in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
"We need all hands on deck," said Ban.
The World Health Organisation has authorised the
use of experimental drugs to fight Ebola including
a serum used to treat Spanish priest Miguel
Pajares, who died in a Madrid hospital on Tuesday
after contracting the disease in Liberia.

Rwanda Patient Tests Negative Of EBOLA Virus.

Kigali - Rwanda said on Tuesday that a German
man put in isolation with fever had tested
negative for the deadly tropical disease Ebola.
"We would like to inform you that the suspected
case of Ebola tested negative", the ministry of
health said in a statement.
"There's no Ebola in Rwanda."
A German student with Ebola-like symptoms was
placed in isolation late Sunday while blood tests
were carried out.
Minister of health Agnes Binagwaho said the
patient was a medical student who had recently
spent time in Liberia, one of four West African
countries where the virus has been spreading.
The other nations are Guinea, Sierre Leone and
Nigeria.
Like other nations across east Africa, Rwanda
says it has put in place measures against the
deadly virus.
The Ebola virus has killed 1 013 people, according
to the latest data from the World Health
Organisation which calls it a global health emergency.

FLAVOUR N’abania now Onga ambassador.

NIGERIAN Highlife crooner, Flavour N’abania, who
recently returned from a musical tour of South
Africa, has been named the face of popular
seasoning, Onga, in a deal said to worth some
millions of naira. Until now, top Nollywood actress,
Kate Henshaw, had been the only known celebrity
who is the face of Onga. Flavour, as ...
The post FLAVOUR N’abania now Onga ambassador
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Press Statement Of Ebola Virus

Nigeria has now recorded seven (7) confirmed
cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). The first
one was the index case-the imported case
from Liberia of which the victim is now late.
Yesterday, 5th August, 2014, the first known
Nigerian to die of the EVD was recorded and
this was one of the nurses that attended to the
Liberian. The other five cases are currently
being treated at the Isolation ward in Lagos.
It is pertinent to note that: i. All the Nigerians
diagnosed of the EVD were primary contacts of
the index case. ii. The 24/7 Emergency
Operations Centre which I intimated you of in
my last press
conference will be fully functional by tomorrow.
It will be headed by Dr. Faisal Shuaibu as the
Incident Manager. He will later today lead a 6-
man inter-agency team drawn from National
Primary Health Care
Development Agency (NPHCDA), the US CDC,
the WHO, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation to Lagos to complete the
setting up of the Centre. They will be joined by
the other personnel from the Lagos State
Government and the federal hospitals in the
Lagos area as well as the Nigeria Centre for
Disease Control.
I have also appointed a Director of
Communication and Community Mobilization
who will be based in Lagos- Prof. O. Onajole of
the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. We
are embarking on recruiting additional health
personnel to strengthen the team who are
currently managing the situation in Lagos.
We are making arrangements to procure
Isolation tents to quicken the pace of providing
isolation wards in all the states of the
federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
We are also setting up a special team to
provide counseling and psychosocial support
to patients, identified contacts and their
families.

Ebola, now a matter of national emergency, Federal Government declares

The Federal government has declared the Ebola
outbreak in Nigeria a matter of national
Emergency, adding that everyone is now at risk of
being infected.
Speaking with State House correspondence at the
end of today's Federal Executive Council meeting,
the Minister of Health, Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu
said the Nigerian government has written to the
Director of the United State Centre for Disease
Control to request for the release of some of the
unapproved ZMAG drug which has proven to be
useful in the treatment of the Ebola disease. He
said the Federal government awaits a response
from the United state government and hopeful if
the drugs are released, they could be used to treat
the confirmed cases of the Ebola virus disease in
Nigeria. Continue...
The Minister advised Nigerians to avoid handshake
as much as possible, stating that the virus is both
contagious and infectious. He also said the virus
could also be contacted through the sharing of
bedspreads, pillow cases and towels among other
personal effects with infected person. He said the
disease is not airborne but at close range of a
1meter from an infected person, the disease
droplets can be transmitted.
The Minister also revealed that Isolation tent for
each confirmed case cost the government as
much as N20million. As regards the corpse of a
Nigerian brought in from Liberia last week into
Anambra state which caused Ebola scare in the
state, the Minister said thorough examination on
the corpse showed the man did not die of the
deadly disease.
As part of strategies to rise to the national
emergency, Chukwu said a website,
www.ebolaalert.org , has been designed to offer
information on the virus.