Ebola: 400 Under Surveillance In Rivers; As Amaechi Warns Against Stigmatisation …WHO Okays Eight Possible Cures, Two Vaccines

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control Project Director, Dr. Abdulsalami Nasidi, has said that the health ministry is monitoring  huge umber of people in Rivers State suspected of Ebola virus after they came in contact with a Port Harcourt doctor who died of the disease but hid the fact that he had been exposed.
Nasidi said this yesterday in Geneva, saying that there is an improvement due to the state government’s efforts at containing the spread of the disease.
In an interview with our correspondent, he said that more isolation wards were being opened in the oil industry hub but voiced confidence that there would not be “many cases” there.
After having contact with an Ebola patient and before his own death on August 22, the Port Harcourt doctor, named by local authorities as Iyke Enemuo, carried on treating patients and met scores of friends, relatives and medics, leaving about 60 of them at high risk of infection.
The doctor’s wife, who is also a physician, and a patient in the same hospital have been infected with Ebola.
“Everything about this doctor was in secrecy, he violated our public health laws by treating a patient with a highly pathogenic agent who revealed to him that he had contact with Ebola and didn’t want to be treated in Lagos because he might be put in isolation.
“He treated him in secrecy outside hospital premises. When he became ill he did not reveal to his colleagues that he had contact with someone who contracted Ebola. He was taken to General Hospital, a private hospital that sees everybody.
“That is the only case that effectively escaped our surveillance network. We are paying now for it,” Nasidi said.
He spoke on the sidelines of a two-day World Health Organisation experts meeting aimed at speeding development of Ebola drugs and vaccines.
Meanwhile, Rivers State Governor and Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has called on religious and traditional leaders in the state to collaborate and work with the government to contain the Ebola virus in the state.
At a meeting with traditional rulers, church leaders and those of the Muslim community in the state, at Government House, Port Harcourt, Governor Amaechi gave the leaders an expository on the Ebola virus, and enjoined them to sensitize the people in their different domains, and partner with his administration in its operational rescue effort.
Amaechi also warned against stigmatization of people suspected to be infected with the Ebola virus, and added the Rivers State Government was doing its best to contain and eliminate the disease in the state.
He urged religious leaders to preach about the disease in their churches and mosques as well as traditional rulers in their various communities, and urged them to encourage those under them to imbibe healthy living and wash their hands regularly.
”Ebola is not a death sentence if properly managed. If you think you are Ebola positive and you know and you run away, you are living in self-denial, so we want our pastors, our Imams and our traditional Rulers to pass on this message.
”First, don’t heal them for us, don’t touch them for us, just call us, we will come there and in six hours after examination of the person, we will get the result and treat the person accordingly. We are doing that to curtail the spread of Ebola in our communities, so that we can be free to do our normal businesses. But for now, don’t live in fear, don’t panic.  If you suspect a case, please call the Ebola line,” Amaechi admonished.
”We are discouraging people who have Ebola from going to Church.  You know why? Church is a place that you have a large crowd of people. If you touch one person or two persons, you are contaminating the environment and the people, and they may get infected. If you suspect, don’t stigmatize them, call the Ebola line, we will come there, they will examine them.  We have the machine to test them and within six hours we can get the result whether a person is Ebola positive or negative.
”You don’t need to run away when you have Ebola.  When you run away, you will infect your family members. That means they can also possibly die, but if you report to government, government will take you in, we will feed you and feed you well, hydrate you and doctors will treat the symptoms if they come.”
Amaechi urged the religious and traditional leaders to immediately report suspected cases of Ebola virus using the available Ebola help lines: 08167733939, 08033124314 or the state’s emergency line 112. He said the state has the necessary facilities to deal with the outbreak but called for the cooperation of everyone in the state to successfully stamp out the Ebola disease.
”My reason for calling you today is to partner with you in our attempt to eliminate Ebola from our communities. As religious and traditional leaders, you have a major role to play. Your people respect and listen to you.”
”I am a Christian, a Catholic by birth and I have been in the Catholic Church all my life and I believe in the miraculous power of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you don’t know what miracle is, I know. I hope you know how I became Governor? I am the only Nigerian that became governor without an election.  So, I don’t doubt the power of God and I have never doubted God’s power. But, I also believe that we need to do the needful to deal with Ebola.  So, don’t walk into Ebola because you believe you have spiritual powers.  It means that if you have people who have the symptoms of Ebola, you call the Ebola line.” he said.
Also addressing the leaders, the Incident Control Manager on the Ebola virus in Nigeria, Festus Shuaibu, explained the process of containing the disease in Rivers State, assuring the people of success as recorded in Lagos while stressing the need for cooperation and support from the traditional and religious leaders in the state, as well as all people of the state.
A cross section of religious and traditional leaders at the meeting commended Governor Amaechi for the initiative, describing him as being proactive. They pledged their support and cooperation to tackle the Ebola outbreak in the state in partnership with the Amaechi administration.
Meanwhile,eight experimental treatments and two vaccines for Ebola were on the table yesterday as 200 health experts met under the auspices of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to discuss how to end the world’s worst-ever outbreak of the killer virus.
No fully tested and approved treatments or vaccines exist for Ebola, which has killed more than 1,900 people in West Africa since the beginning of the year.
In a bid to stem the epidemic, the World Health Organization has condoned the use of experimental drugs, and experts in Geneva were discussing which treatments were in the pipeline and how quickly they could be made available to the public.
In a working document for the closed-door meeting, the UN health agency listed eight potential therapies, including the experimental drug ZMapp, which has been given to a handful of frontline health workers who have contracted Ebola, three of whom have recovered, and two of whom have died.
Two experimental vaccines for Ebola, which transmits through contact with infected bodily fluids, were also listed.
“None is clinically proven,” WHO stressed in its working document, adding that “while extraordinary measures are now in place to accelerate the pace of clinical trials, new treatments or vaccines are not expected for widespread use before the end of 2014.
“Until then, only small quantities of up to a few… doses/treatments will be available,” it said, pointing out that in normal circumstances, the clinical evaluation period for new drugs and vaccines can take up to a decade.
The experts meeting yesterday, including policy makers, ethicists, clinicians, researchers and patient representatives from affected countries, also aimed to facilitate contacts between countries affected by the disease and countries producing treatments.
Global health experts have stepped up warnings in recent days that world leaders need to do more to address the epidemic, which is most prominent in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
“The current west African Ebola outbreak is unprecedented in size, complexity and the strain it has imposed on health systems,” WHO said in a statement.
“There is intense public interest in, and demand for, anything that offers hope of definitive treatment.”

Rivers State Governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi addressing traditional and religious stakeholders on the fight against Ebola virus in the state at Government House, Port Harcourt, Wednesday.