Succour is on the way for Nigerians and other people infected with the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in West Africa as Canada is set to
donate between 800 and 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine-VSV-EBOV- to the World Health Organisation (WHO) for use in the Ebola ravaged region.
The vaccine which was developed by the National Microbiology Laboratory, Canada has shown promise in animal research although it has never been tested on humans, Canada’s Public Health Agency pointed out. The Canadian Government ethics advisory group and WHO panel of medical ethics experts both informed the decision to give out VSV-EBOV, despite its unknown
efficacy and adverse effects.
As Canada intends to keep a small portion in the unlikely event the vaccine is needed for compassionate use, experts say supplies of both the vaccine and experimental drug Zmapp manufactured by ZMapp Biopharmaceuticals are limited and could take four to six months to make large quantities of the vaccine enough to have any real impact at preventing the illness.
This comes as WHO on Tuesday said it was ethical to use untested drugs on Ebola patients after the virus has infected 1,848 people
and killed 1,013 as at August 9 2014, making it the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history.
In the meantime, the gulf between developed and developing nations appeared to have widened in some quarters following reports
suggesting that the Ebola drug was being used to treat Westerners but not West Africans.
“What if it had killed both of them? It is only because it worked, seemingly very well, that people are screaming, How come people
in Africa didn’t get it? If the first people (to receive doses of ZMapp) would have been Liberian, headlines would have screamed, ‘Experimental drug tested on poor Africans.
“If ZMapp turns out to be as effective as it seems to be, and it’s possible to make much more of it, then we end up with a situation
where it becomes unethical to withhold treatment. We should do everything we can to nip this epidemic in the bud,” Paul Wolpe,
director, Center for Ethics at Emory University, Atlanta, told CNN.
In the meantime, the Federal Ministry of Health is set to procure Isolation tents to quicken the pace of providing isolation wards in all states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
Onyebuchi Chukwu, minister of health, disclosed that a 24-hour emergency operations centre is currently functional and the country is in collaboration with WHO, United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) for technical capacity as well as other personnel from the Lagos State Government, federal hospitals in Lagos area and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
“We are setting up a special team to provide counseling and psychosocial support to patients, identified contacts and their families.
The Federal Ministry of Health, State Ministries of Health and HHSS Federal Capital Territory, Abuja are to devise means of ensuring that private sector health providers are sensitized and cases with high index of suspicion are promptly referred,” Chukwu explained.
The outbreak of the deadly contagious disease in West Africa has continued to evolve with no immediate end in sight. While many
barriers stand in the way of rapid containment, severely Ebola affected countries- Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone-that returned to political stability following years of conflict recently, have their left health systems largely destroyed or severely disabled.
Lack of capacity has made standard containment measures, such as early detection and isolation of cases, contact tracing and monitoring, and rigorous procedures for infection control, difficult to implement in a bid to halt the spread of Ebola.
Recent surge in the number of cases has stretched all capacities to breaking point with supplies of personal protective equipment and disinfectants inadequate. The outbreak continues to outstrip diagnostic capacity, delaying the confirmation or exclusion of cases and impeding contact tracing. Aid organizations, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), which has provided the mainstay of clinical care are exhausted.
Six months into the outbreak, fear is proving to be the most difficult barrier to overcome. Fear causes contacts of cases to escape from the surveillance system, families to hide symptomatic loved ones or take them to traditional healers, and patients to flee treatment centres.
The outbreak control is further compromised when fear causes airlines to refuse to transport personal protective equipment and courier services to refuse to transport properly and securely packaged patient samples to a WHO-approved laboratory.
