According to the Bible Book of Job Chapter fourteen verse one: “Man who is born of a woman is of few days but full of troubles”. This quote, no doubt, remains a transcendental truth because the truth is applicable to all humans irrespective of race or religion.
It is common knowledge that eventualities affecting mankind range from natural disasters, manmade accidents and outbreak of diseases. In Africa today, despite the ravaging scourge of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AID, Ebola virus has come to stay particularly in East, Central and West Africa. In fact, more than 600 persons have lost their lives in the West African nations of Guinea, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Liberia due largely to Ebola outbreak. Only recently, Africa’s “big brother” Nigeria recorded its first Ebola death of a Liberian man who flew into Lagos, Nigeria, where he was reported dead few hours after. The death of the Liberian man has, therefore, sent shocking wave of fear and panic across the country, particularly as the Ebola virus kills faster than malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS and other prevalent diseases of our time.
Unfortunately, as Nigeria and indeed West Africa attempt to create awareness on the deadly virus, less attention appears to be paid to the Ebola virus as a zonotic disease. Scientifically, a zonotic disease is one that is transmissible from animal reservoir to man and vice versa. This is so because man by nature does not live in isolation of his environment.
From a Christian religious point of view, man, from origin, was created and handed a garden implying that man enjoys a symbiotic relationship with plants and animals for food, games and for companionship. Unfortunately, man also pays dearly by not only serving as prey to wild animals but by contracting diseases there from.
It would be recalled that Ebola virus came to limelight in 1976 from forest bats along Ebola River in Zaire now Democratic Republic of Congo which is also named after its capital city Congo Kinshasa and not neighbouring Congo Brazzaville. Ebola virus is said to have been transmitted to chimpanzees, monkeys and antelopes when they feed on the bats and other infected animals and birds. This is not to undermine the fact that some societies related with and associated with these animals for spiritual reasons. Man, in turn, contracts the Ebola virus through hunting and killing of animals as bush meat for various delicacies, games and as pets.
Empirical facts show that because man’s anatomy and physiology are different from those of animals and birds, animals seem to live longer with it than man can afford to. Interestingly, bats are prepared in a spicy stew called ‘kedjenai’ in parts of Guinea while fresh bush meats are cherished in pepper soup and as suya meat across Africa including Nigeria. Consequently, direct contact with infected bush-meat, blood, fluid and tissues of animals remains a mode of transmission. It is no surprise, therefore, that Guinea and later Sierra Leone and Liberia warned and indeed issued outright ban on eating of bush meat after Ebola outbreak.
One thing is clear; man-to-man transmission is caused also by direct contact with bodily fluid, blood of infected persons, social intercourse, blood transfusion as well as handshake while infected persons exhibit symptoms ranging from diarrhoea, bleeding, high temperature, hemorrhagic fever, and sore throat among others.
It is worthy of note that Ebola virus has claimed many lives including healthcare providers in some West African Countries. Only recently too, a frontline medical doctor in Liberia Samuel Brisbane died of Ebola virus, and so was another Ugandan doctor, while an American aid worker Nancy Writebol had tested positive to the virus.
Presently, there is no cure for Ebola disease. Besides travel ban issued by some West African nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone, it is pertinent for all West African countries to embrace the similar ban on bush meat consumption to avert infection. The Immigration Service must apply stringent measures at the nation’s borders as part of effort to check influx on possible infected persons from neighbouring countries where prevalence rate is high. Most importantly, the Federal Ministry of Health must organize stakeholders’ conference for experts in the health sector to interface with a view to providing adequate Ebola disease surveillance, diagnoses, treatment or cure.
These stakeholders include but not limited to human and veterinary doctors, virologists, laboratory scientists, clinicians, pharmacists and nurses. In as much as it is good to isolate our quarantine infected persons, government should not hesitate to deport suspected infected persons to their countries of origin. Healthcare providers particularly doctors and nurses must practice barrier nursing involving wearing of hand gloves and mask where necessary because as they say: If gold rusts what will iron do. In other words, if healthcare providers can contract the disease from infected persons, what would be the fate of ordinary citizens?
The Federal Quarantine Service must request animal health certificate from pet owners who import pets such as dogs, parrot, cats and horses. It is no exaggeration that dogs transmit rabbis and tuberculosis, parrots transmit psittacosis while horses transmit equine diseases to man as zonotic disease as well as bovine tuberculosis from cattle.
Pockets of resistance however have greeted ban on consumption of bush meat from few scholars. For instance, Bob Swanepoel, a virologist with the University of Pretoria, South Africa’s Zoonoses Research Unit stressed that according to scientific evidence, “the main risk of human infection by Ebola virus is not thought to be from all bush meat but only infected animals from fresh carcasses”. Whatever be the case, zonotic disease is real and Ebola disease is also real and its transmission from animal to man as incontrovertible.
Everyone is expected to take precautionary measures, eat only bush meat certified fit by veterinary doctors and immunized pets to avoid the risk of contracting Ebola disease and other zonotic diseases.
The time to act is now!
BARIDORN SIKA
