Since the American-Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, flew into Lagos on July 20, Nigeria has joined the league of West African countries battling with the Ebola Virus Disease. So far, the disease has killed four persons in the country, including Sawyer.
Indeed, EVD is the enemy knocking at the door of many countries across the world, respecting no borders.
Scientists are daily looking for ways to tackle the spread of this highly infectious disease that has no cure yet. They have described it as the biggest health challenge facing the sub-region at present.
However, other countries in Africa had successfully battled Ebola in times past and Nigeria may be able to learn from those that were in the forefront of the fight against the viral disease.
One of them, Dr. Jackson Amone, who has tackled several Ebola outbreaks in Uganda, and has volunteered to go to West Africa to help his counterparts with the growing crisis in the region says, “Where duty calls you go,” he told me from his small office packed with papers in the capital, Kampala, before he left. What did his family make of his decision?”You have to convince them,” he replied.
Dr. Amone, has treated many Ebola patients and led national response teams in the East African nation, which has become a hub for Ebola experts, according to the BBC.
Before the epidemic in West Africa, the worst outbreak was recorded in Uganda in 2000. More than 425 people contracted the virus, mainly in the northern town of Gulu. More than half of them died.
Since then there have been four more outbreaks.
In addition to that, Uganda has had to fight similar viral haemorrhagic fevers like Marbug, Crimean Congo and Yellow Fever. But the government has managed to stop widespread Ebola outbreaks. During the last one in Luwero, central Uganda, there were seven cases and four deaths.
What can Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria learn from Uganda’s experience?
The importance of speed cannot be underestimated. Uganda now has a laboratory that can test for Ebola and other haemorrhagic fevers. Spotting cases quickly, confirming them as Ebola and sending out teams.
At the Uganda Virus Research Institute, overlooking Lake Victoria, in the sleepy town of Entebbe, a small laboratory has been set up to do this.
With the help of the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention scientists are receiving Ebola results within 24 hours.
Now the thing has spread out, we’re going to have to do fire fighting”Dr Jackson Amone
Stephen Balinandi is a laboratory specialist at CDC and has worked on many of Uganda’s outbreaks says having a laboratory is important in checking the outbreaks.
“Unlike before when specimens would be shipped to international laboratories in the United States, we are able to test specimens here within a short time,” he says.
“And we send back the results to the health care givers in the field, who are able to properly manage the patients.”
But any one of the scientists at this laboratory will say that their work is futile unless suspected cases can be picked up to begin with.To this effect, the health ministry has educated health workers and the general public on Ebola symptoms.
A young team of techies has also created a health monitoring system known as mTrac that helped with the last Ebola outbreak.
Using a basic mobile phone, health workers reported suspected Ebola cases and received information on how to help communities.
Over the last decade, their response to outbreaks has improved immeasurably, Mr. Balinandi says.
In earlier outbreaks, medics were forced to rely on little more than a hunch.
Entebbe airport in Uganda has set up Ebola screenings in response to the West African outbreak
“After very many people had died – then there would be suspicion that we are dealing with something,” he said. Now testing is done earlier in order to pinpoint an outbreak. Public information campaigns are also vital.
During an outbreak, messages are sent out telling people how to spot potential Ebola patients and how to stop themselves from catching the virus.
This starts at the local level, where leaders and social mobilisation teams go out to speak to those in the affected communities.
And, on the national stage, the president himself has been known to get involved.
In 2012 when there were Ebola cases in western Uganda he made a statement telling Ugandans not to kiss or shake hands. It quickly made the headlines, and although it became a joke, he got his message across. The public understood that limiting close contact was vital.
Local authorities often act quickly closing schools, markets and burying suspected Ebola victims to avoid gatherings. Many Ugandans will admit that their national health system is somewhat lacking, with cases of women dying in labour, drug shortages and poorly resourced health centres.
But the fact that public health officials have managed to stage effective responses despite the many limitations should provide an example for the governments in West Africa, which face similar challenges.
Dr. Amone, who has now arrived in Sierra Leone, feels the first crucial steps that would have limited the outbreak there were missed.
“The fact that you need to accept that Ebola is with you at the beginning is very important, because now the thing has spread out, we’re going to have to do fire fighting.”
Taxis, planes and viruses
For scientists tracking the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, it is not about complex virology and genotyping, but about how contagious microbes – like humans – use planes, bikes and taxis to spread.
So far, authorities have taken no action to limit international travel in the region. The airlines association IATA said on Thursday that the World Health Organisation is not recommending any such restrictions or frontier closures.
The risk of the virus moving to other continents is low, disease specialists say. But tracing every person who may have had contact with an infected case is vital to getting on top of the outbreak within West Africa, and doing so often means teasing out seemingly routine information about victims’ lives.
In Nigeria, which had an imported case of the virus in a Liberian-American who flew to Lagos last month, authorities have had to trace all passengers and anyone else he had crossed paths with to avoid the kind of spread other countries in the region have suffered.
The West Africa outbreak, which began in Guinea in February, has already spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. With more than 1,900 cases and over 900 deaths, it is the largest since the Ebola virus was discovered almost 40 years ago.
Sierra Leone has declared a state of public emergency to tackle the outbreak, while Liberia is closing schools and considering quarantining some communities.
“The most important thing is good surveillance of everyone who has been in contact or could have been exposed,” said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology and head of global health security at Britain’s Royal Institute of International Affairs tells Reuters.
The original case
The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples’ lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola’s spread.
Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.
The woman’s sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.
Ebola is named after a river in the northern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Statistically, it is a relatively trivial disease, killing a few thousand people since its discovery in 1976. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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