The Good News About Ebola
Alden Abbott /
As public health officials here and abroad take steps to cope with the Ebola virus disease outbreak, there are a few pieces of good news that merit highlighting.
Nigeria declared Ebola-free. The World Health Organization declares an Ebola disease outbreak has ended within a country once 42 days have passed since the last day any person in that nation had contact with a confirmed or probable Ebola victim.
On Monday, Nigeria reached that mark, and the WHO now considers it free from Ebola transmission. (Of course, future events will determine whether it remains Ebola-free.) In announcing Nigeria’s Ebola-free status, the WHO commended the Nigerian government’s rapid establishment of an Ebola emergency operations center after the first Nigerian Ebola case was confirmed in July 2014.
According to Reuters, on July 20, Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian diplomat and a U.S. citizen, collapsed at the international airport in Lagos, Nigeria, the capital of Africa’s most populous country. Lagos alone has a population of more than 21 million. Sawyer was at first thought to have malaria and was taken to a Lagos hospital. Attending physicians quickly diagnosed him as having Ebola and prevented him from leaving, despite his demands to be set free, thereby preventing a possible serious outbreak. (Sawyer did infect several hospital workers before dying.)
The hospital promptly notified Nigerian government officials, who set up an isolation unit and called for international assistance. The WHO, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and UNICEF provided the government with expertise for outbreak investigation, risk assessment, clinical care and contact tracing.
The Nigerian government used an existing health surveillance system for polio to trace Sawyer’s contacts and employed mobile technology in partnership with the private sector to update contact lists. Similar to the Country’s polio tracing program public health officials made more than 18,000 house visits in connection to the 900 individuals deemed high-risk contacts. The Ebola operations manager in Nigeria for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said this contact tracing system was key to preventing the disease from spreading into communities where it would have been harder to control. Senegal, another West African country was also declared Ebola-free on Oct. 17. Senegal shares a 330 km border with the country Guinea, one of the most Ebola-affected countries in the region.
Spanish Nurse’s Aid Free of Ebola. On Tuesday, Spanish physicians treating Teresa Romero Ramos, the Spanish nurse’s aide who contracted Ebola after treating a virus-stricken patient in Madrid, determined she is free of the virus. Four separate tests found no indications of virus in her blood. Ramos, 44, was found to be infected after treating an Ebola-stricken missionary, who died in Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital on Sept. 25. Ms. Romero was treated with an experimental drug and with blood plasma taken from people who had survived Ebola.
Work Proceeding Quickly on Ebola Treatments and Vaccines. On Tuesday, Dr. Marie Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director for health systems and innovation, announced serum made from the blood of recovered Ebola patients could be available in Liberia within weeks. Dr. Kieny also indicated efforts have begun to get Ebola drugs and an Ebola vaccine ready for possible testing and use as early as January in the Ebola-stricken countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
“There are partnerships which are starting to be put in place to have capacity in the three countries to safely extract plasma and make preparation that can be used for the treatment of infective patients,” Dr. Kieny said. “The partnership which is moving the quickest will be in Liberia where we hope that in the coming weeks there will be facilities set up to collect the blood, treat the blood and be able to process it for use.”
In addition, testing on one vaccine has begun at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, and a trial for a second vaccine, initially developed in Canada, has started at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., according to the WHO.
In conclusion, the efforts of governments and international organizations to combat Ebola may be starting to bear fruit–as shown by the apparent success of contact tracing in preventing a substantial Ebola outbreak in Nigeria, and the ongoing initiatives to develop Ebola treatments and vaccines.