3rd September, 2014
Kazeem Ugbodaga/with agency report
Some unscrupulous Nigerians are profiteering from the outbreak of the deadly Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, as they have begun the sale of fake Ebola Cassette Test Kits in Lagos, southwest Nigeria.
In view of this, the Lagos State Government on Tuesday alerted members of the public to the sale of the fake kits, warning them not to patronise the dubious marketers.
According to a statement signed by the Special Adviser on Media to the Governor, Mr Hakeem Bello, “the Ebola test kit, which is branded as ‘Rapid Response Canada with test results purportedly available in 10 minutes’ is a hoax.”
Bello warned that there are no Ebola test kits manufactured anywhere in the world, as the technique for its manufacture does not exist yet.
Also, Lagos Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris lamented that some hospitals in Lagos have started to reject patients with feverish condition even without trace of Ebola just for fear that they might be having the disease.
“Rejection of febrile patients in hospitals without proper assessment constitutes another challenge, as same may also increase stigma and deter self-reporting. Not everybody with fever of haemorrhage has come down with EVD. A situation where untested cases are automatically referred to the Mainland General Hospital is not a good practice,” he said.
Idris appealed to both public and private doctors to commence the management of these cases using universal safety precautions and only refer them if there was an indication to do so.
The commissioner added that the government was aware of both the health and economic issues related to the containment of the EVD as the current efforts were primarily and doggedly directed at human aspect.
“There are plans to address the economic issues in the foreseeable future. This is in realisation that business of especially some private health facilities have been adversely affected,” he said.
Idris called on residents of the state to adhere to the highest possible standard of personal and environmental hygiene and waste management disposal processes, adding that in the overriding interest of all, there would be a zero tolerance stance to indiscriminate public urination and defecation.
Meanwhile, the global aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said 800 more beds for Ebola patients were urgently needed in the Liberian capital Monrovia alone, while in Sierra Leone highly infectious bodies were rotting in the streets.
Reuters reports that governments and aid organizations have scrambled to contain the disease, which according to the World Health Organization (WHO) has killed more than 1,500 in West Africa since March.
In an address to United Nations member states, MSF President Joanne Liu said: “Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it.” She said aid charities and West African governments did not have the capacity to stem the outbreak and needed intervention by foreign states.
Slamming what she called “a global coalition of inaction,” Liu called for the urgent dispatch of field hospitals with isolation wards and mobile medical laboratories.
MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said biological disaster response teams were needed to support West Africa’s buckling healthcare systems.
There are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments, but as hospitals and Ebola treatment centers battled to contain the disease and tend to the sick and dying, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said a federal contract worth up to $42.3 million would help accelerate testing of an experimental Ebola virus treatment being developed by privately held Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.
The agency said in a statement that Mapp, based in San Diego, California, would manufacture a small amount of its ZMapp drug, which uses antibodies manufactured in tobacco plants, for early stage safety studies and animal studies needed to prove its effectiveness and safety in people.
Human safety trials are due to begin this week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline Plc GSK.L and later this year on one from NewLink Genetics Corp NLNK.O.
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa could infect more than 20,000 people and spread to more countries, the World Health Organization warned last week. With a fatality rate of 52 percent, the death toll stood at 1,552 as of August 26. Cases of Ebola have been reported in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, and Democratic Republic of Congo. The cases in Congo, which include 31 deaths, are thought to be a separate outbreak and not related to the West African cases.