I had not been too worried since the outbreak of the Ebola disease in Nigeria. It wasn’t because I was naive or unaware of how deadly the virus is. I know it has no cure, for now. ZMapp remains an experimental drug. I know that over 80 per cent of patients die within days of infection.
For once, I was happy with the way both the federal and Lagos State governments reacted immediately it became obvious that Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer had brought the disease to our shores.
But I am scared now. Really scared. On Thursday, August 14, Health Minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, confirmed that the virus claimed its fourth victim, a nurse. He also confirmed a new case – one of the doctors who treated Sawyer – bringing to 12 the number of confirmed cases in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, almost 200 people are placed under observation.
The situation is getting worse rather than abating, and apart from quarantining patients, nothing concrete is being done to save lives; not because those responsible don’t care but because we simply don’t have the capacity.
This fact is underscored by the anxiety of the families and colleagues of the medical personnel quarantined in Lagos after contracting the virus.
At a press conference in Lagos on August 14, relatives and colleagues of the senior consultant physician and endocrinologist at the First Consultants Medical Centre, Lagos, A.S. Adadevoh, urged the international community to help the patients.
A consultant physician, Ladi Okuboyejo, Managing Director of Health Management Organisation, said “when you turn on your television, the first news item you hear is Ebola. A few victims have passed on and the question is what is the state of things in our nation right now? …
“We would not want to paint what is black white but it is beyond what we can deal with right now and, therefore, we feel that there is need for us to make this urgent cry for help for the international community to come to our assistance.”
This plea was amplified on Friday, August 15 by Medecins Sans Frontires (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, a French-founded non-governmental organisation and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, best known for projects in war-torn regions and developing countries facing endemic diseases.
At a press conference at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, MSF reeled out scary statistics of the devastating impact of Ebola.
Since the outbreak in Guinea in December last year, 670 people have contracted the virus, with 355 fatalities. The situation is worse in Liberia where 377 out of the 510 who tested positive to it have died.
In Sierra Leone, there are well over 783 victims with over 350 fatalities; and now in Nigeria, there are 12 reported cases with four deaths.
In all, MSF said, there are 1,975 reported cases and 1,069 of those victims have died. But they insisted that this figure is a tip of the iceberg as many more may have died in rural areas without being recorded.
The group likens the unfolding events to a war situation, with fear hanging in the air like the Sword of Damocles. With a mounting death toll and medical staff being exposed to the virus, nobody understands what is going on. The result is general fear on the entire West African landscape.
Concluding that it will take months to control the spread of the virus, MSF said there is need to strengthen surveillance. It described the situation as desperate and acknowledged that West African countries have no capacity to handle the epidemic as health services are overwhelmed.
MSF called on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to step up to the plate and take the leadership in containing the disease.
MSF itself admitted that it is overstretched. Currently, it has 676 staff working in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, but warned that it has reached its limit in terms of staff.
Penultimate week, the WHO reluctantly declared that the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is an “extraordinary event” and now constitutes an international health risk. That was after being in denial for eight months.
“A coordinated international response is deemed essential to stop and reverse the international spread of Ebola,” it said in a statement after a two-day meeting of its emergency committee on Ebola.
In response, MSF Director of Operations, Barth Janssens, said: “Declaring Ebola an international public health emergency shows how seriously WHO is taking the current outbreak but statements won’t save lives.
“Now we need this statement to translate into immediate action on the ground. For weeks, MSF has been repeating that a massive medical, epidemiological and public health response is desperately needed to save lives and reverse the course of the epidemic. “Lives are being lost because the response is too slow. Countries possessing necessary capacities must immediately dispatch available infectious disease experts and disaster relief assets to the region.
“It is clear the epidemic will not be contained without a massive deployment on the ground from these states.
“In concrete terms, all of the following need to be radically scaled up: medical care, training of health staff, infection control, contact tracing, epidemiological surveillance, alert and referral systems, community mobilisation and education.”
The fact that MSF still called on the WHO to take the leadership in the fight against the virus on August 15 shows that the global health body may not have done what it promised to do a week earlier.
There seems to be a reluctance by the international community to help in mitigating this disaster and I hope the slow response has nothing to do with the perception that Ebola is a West African disease.
That gut feeling exacerbates my fears.