Hand Washing - A Simple Prevention for Ebola Virus Disease (EVD)

Keeping hands clean is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of infection and illness including the deadly Ebola Virus.

Hand washing is easy to do and it’s one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of many types of infections and illness in all settings—from your home and workplace to child care facilities and hospitals.

Clean hands can stop germs (bacteria, viruses ,fungi etc) from spreading from one person to another and throughout an entire community.

When should you wash your hands?

Before, during, and after preparing food and before eating food

Before and after caring for someone who is sick.

Before and after treating a cut or wound.

After using the toilet

After changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has used the toilet.

After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.

After touching an animal, animal feed, or animal waste.

After touching garbage.

What is the right way to wash your hands?

• Wash your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap.
• Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Be sure to lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
• Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds.
• Rinse your hands well under clean, running water.
• Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them.

What should you do if you don’t have soap and clean, running water?

Washing hands with soap and water is the best way to reduce the number of germs on them in most situations. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitiser that contains at least 60 per cent alcohol.

Alcohol-based hand sanitisers can quickly reduce the number of germs on hands in some situations, but sanitisers do not eliminate all types of germs.

Hand sanitisers are not as effective when hands are visibly dirty or greasy.

How do you use hand sanitisers?

• Apply the product to the palm of one hand.
• Rub your hands together.
• Rub the product over all surfaces of your hands and fingers until your hands are dry.

In conclusion, the take home message from the professorial lecture includes: The virus is easily killed by contact with soap, bleach, sunlight, or drying. A washing machine will kill the virus in clothing saturated with infected body fluids.

As always, practice good hand washing techniques, but you will not contract Ebola if you do not touch a very ill or dying person.

Please share this information with your friends and families and try not to spread panic on social media.

Dr Maurice Iwu - Committee to Tackle Ebola Virus Disease 'EVD' in Nigeria

President Goodluck Jonathan has just named Maurice Iwu, the notorious former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as a member of a committee charged with shaping Nigeria’s response to the widening scare of the deadly Ebola virus that has so far claimed more than 700 lives since its latest outbreak. The virus had claimed its largest tolls in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, with a few cases in Ghana and one confirmed death in Nigeria.

Mr. Iwu’s appointment to the committee comes shortly after the controversial former electoral umpire claimed that he had made a breakthrough in the treatment of the virus, using an extract found in kola nuts. The claims by Mr. Iwu, an erstwhile professor of pharmacognosy—a branch of pharmacology that deals with medicinal substances in plants—have found no collaboration in the scientific community.

In fact, Mr. Iwu first stated in the 1990s that he had collaborated with other scientists to discover a cure for the Ebola virus that then ravaged the Congo. Despite garnering more than $2 million in research funds, Mr. Iwu and his research team were not able to develop any drug to fight the debilitating and incurable disease.

Other members of the Ebola committee appointed by President Jonathan are S.K. Gamaliel, a professor and director-general of the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development, and Innocent Uja, a professor and director-general of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research.

Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said the committee was expected to carry out research into the treatment of the Ebola virus; receive and verify claims relating to the treatment of the disease; collate and analyze related research findings, and advise the government on policy for combating the dreadful disease.

“The group does not have a limit to its work,” Mr. Chukwu said. “The members will continue to work until there is [a] result.”

On rumors in some quarters that bitter kola has the potency to cure Ebola, the minister said, “There is no proof of any such fruit known to cure Ebola. There is no scientific evidence that if you eat bitter kola, it will prevent Ebola.

“However, in vitro research showed that some extracts from bitter kola tend to have some activity against the virus. The research was not concluded. I want to restate that taking bitter kola does not stop Ebola Virus Disease.”

The Ebola committee’s broad mandate means that Mr. Iwu would be part of a group that may be vetting his own uncompleted research work and unverified claims. 

"The ZMapp Drug" - Could this be the Cure for Ebola Virus Disease (EVD)?

Dr. Kent Brantly, who is being treated with an experimental drug for the Ebola virus at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, will soon be joined by the second American to have contracted the virus.

The drug ZMapp, made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., of San Diego, has been identified as a potential treatment for the disease but had never been tested on a human until now. The second patient, Nancy Writebol, who left for Atlanta from Monrovia, Liberia, on Tuesday, has started recovering from the disease after receiving two doses of the drug before leaving for the U.S., according to the Associated Press, or AP. ZMapp was developed by a long-running research program supported by the U.S. government and its military.

Writebol, who left Monrovia for Atlanta at 9:12 p.m. EDT on Monday, is expected to arrive in the U.S. on Tuesday on the same plane that brought Brantly to Emory. Brantly, who got the virus while he was working in Liberia, reportedly began recovering Sunday with the help of ZMapp, which boosts the patient’s immune system to fight off the effect of the Ebola virus. However, doctors working on beating back the virus are only cautiously optimistic about the effectiveness of the new drug.

“Ebola is a tricky virus and one day you can be up and the next day down. One day is not indicative of the outcome,” Bruce Johnson, president of SIM USA, the North Carolina-based group that Writebol worked for in Africa, said, according to AP, adding: “We’re grateful this medicine was available.”

ZMapp is made out of nicotine leaves and was tested on mice having the virus, of which 80 percent survived, according to AP.

Although there is no authorized drug to cure the Ebola virus, several experimental drugs are being created, including ones being developed by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation (NASDAQ:TKMR) of British Columbia. Over the past five days, the company’s stock has shot up by more than 30 percent.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has to permit the experimental use of a drug on humans, but an FDA spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny that the permission had been granted for ZMapp, AP reported.

The current outbreak of Ebola is the worst till date and the World Health Organization, on Monday, reportedly estimated that the virus has so far infected 1,600 people and claimed 887 lives in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria

Ebola Only a Plane Ride Away

Nations around the world have voiced concern about West Africa’s Ebola outbreak spreading via air travel, with warnings like “Ebola only a plane ride away.” In April, Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu admitted that “Nigeria is in danger,” but assured that the government would emphasize education about the disease and implement preventive measures. Unfortunately, on July 25, the first Ebola case was reported in Nigeria. The case was a Liberian man who collapsed at Nigeria’s main airport in Lagos upon arrival from Monrovia, Liberia, and succumbed to the disease soon after. Health Minister Chukwu announced that tests from the Lagos University Teaching Hospital confirmed the diagnosis, although both the WHO and Lagos state government claimed that they were still awaiting lab confirmation as of July 29. Now, the Lagos hospital to which the patient was taken has been quarantined and health officials are monitoring 59 contacts. The WHO is also sending teams to conduct follow-up work in Nigeria and Togo, where the plane made a brief layover.

To date, Ebola has infected at least 1201 people in West Africa and 672 have died. The disease has taken a major toll on healthcare workers—at least 100 have been infected and about 50% have died, according to the WHO. One of Liberia’s most high-profile doctors, Dr. Samuel Brisbane, died of the disease on Saturday. A Ugandan doctor working in Liberia died earlier this month and two Americans have also fallen ill. One, Dr. Kent Brantly, was working with Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina-based medical charity, when he began showing signs of Ebola. The other, Nancy Writebol, was working as a missionary with a joint SIM/Samaritan’s Purse team in Monrovia.

On July 28, Liberia implemented several stringent health measures in an attempt to slow the spread of the disease. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced nationwide border closures except at major entry points, including the Roberts International Airport, James Spriggs Payne Airport, Foya Crossing, Bo Waterside Crossing, and Ganta Crossing. She said that preventive measures and testing centers would be established at these entry points. Due to this state of emergency, public gatherings—such as marches and demonstrations—will be restricted. In addition, Liberian government facilities and public places will be required to provide access to hand washing and other sanitization services. Hotels, restaurants, and entertainment centers will be mandated to play short informational clips on Ebola awareness and prevention.

Mistrust of doctors and concerns about stigmatization may mean that the real danger is an “epidemic of fear,” as Tony Barnett, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, put it. Hostile mobs have confronted healthcare workers and physical barriers have blocked them from entering villages. Doctors Without Borders has classified twelve villages in Guinea as “red,” meaning that they may contain Ebola but are too unsafe to travel to. Local residents fear the emergency treatment center set up in Gueckedou because when patients enter, “they don’t leave alive.” These fears may stem from a lack of education about the disease that leads to misunderstanding about its transmission and treatment as well as mistrust of the outsiders who come to help. Some believe that Ebola is a curse that can only be healed spiritually, while others believe the disease is just a ruse. One former nurse in Kenema, Sierra Leone spread a rumor that Ebola was invented to conceal “cannibalistic rituals” being performed at the hospital. Because of the widespread fears of Ebola and medical treatment, providing education about the disease will be critical to bringing this outbreak under control

Cure for Ebola Virus?

Scientists in Canada announced the successful treatment of Ebola viral infection in monkeys. The encouraging results were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine on June 13.

Researchers from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba identified a number of antibodies that corresponded to proteins on the shell of the Ebola virus. They combined the antibodies into a specific cocktail and administered it to four macaques within 24 hours of infection. All four macaques survived. When the cocktail was administered within 48 hours of infection, two of four macaques survived.

Why is the survival of a few monkeys such big news? Ebola hemorrhagic fever, a disease caused by infection with the Ebola virus, is one of the most deadly and little-understood diseases in the world. There is no vaccine, no standard treatment, and the origin of the virus remains unknown.

Second Ebola Virus Case Confirmed in Nigeria

The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, on Monday said one of the doctors that treated the Liberian-born American, Patrick Sawyer, who died of   the Ebola disease, had contracted the virus.

Chukwu told journalists in Abuja that this is now the second case of Ebola virus disease in Nigeria. This victim is one of the doctors who attended to the patient who brought Ebola virus to Nigeria.

'About eight other persons who came into contact with Sawyer, and who had developed the Ebola symptoms, had been quarantined while 70 others were under surveillance.

'All those who came into contact with the late Sawyer depending on the level of contact are still being traced and being invited every day and they are placed under surveillance just to ensure that the spread of disease is curtailed,' the minister stated.

He added that the Federal Government was currently reinforcing the technical working group on Ebola to include 35 state governments. Lagos State already has a TWG.

The minister allayed the fears being expressed by   the public about the corpses that were brought into Anambra and Imo states from some countries which already had records of the deadly disease.

'Medical records have proved that the corpse taken to Imo State was not carrying Ebola while test is being carried out on the one taken to Anambra State.

''We are collaborating with all the state governments to establish isolation wards for persons proven symptomatic to Ebola and a 24- hour emergency operation centre,' he said.

In the same vein, the minister on Monday inaugurated an Ebola Treatment and Research Group with a mandate to carry out an extensive research into the Ebola virus.

Chukwu said the group would receive and verify claims on Ebola cure; collate and analyse researches on the virus and advise the government as may be appropriate.

The group, according to the minister, has the Director - General of the Nigerian Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development and the Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research as chairmen.

He added that the Nigerian researcher, who had found evidence of Bitter Kola inhibiting the growth of Ebola virus, Prof. Maurice Iwu , and the Director-General of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control are also members of the group. Iwu was also a former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission.

'Although the research on bitter kola was not concluded, no progress can be made without research. For now, there is no scientifically proven vaccine or drug for the treatment of Ebola.

'I can assure the general public that the Federal Government is doing everything   to stop the outbreak of the disease,' he said while enjoining everybody to embrace good hygiene by constantly washing their hands.

Ebola Virus Cure Hope in Our Back Yard - "Bitter Kola" - Garcinia kola

 A plant has been found to halt the deadly Ebola virus in its tracks in laboratory tests, scientists have said.

They used a compound from Garcinia kola, a plant commonly eaten in West Africa. Compounds from the plant have also proved effective against some strains of flu.

If the anti-Ebola compound proves successful in animal and human trials, it will be the first medicine to successfully treat the virus that causes Ebola haemorrhagic fever - an often-fatal condition.

The discovery was announced at the 16th International Botanical Congress in St Louis in the US.

Fighting chance

The virus multiplies rapidly in the human body and quickly overwhelms it, and in advanced cases the patient develops high fever and severe bleeding.

The Garcinia kola compound has been shown to halt multiplication of the virus in the laboratory. If repeated in humans, this would give the body a chance to fight off the virus.

The active compound is what is known as a dimeric flavonoid, which is two flavonoid molecules fused together.

Flavonoids are non-toxic and can be found in orange and lemon rinds as well as the colourings of other plants.

Drug hopes

The tests are in the early stages still, but the researchers hope that if they continue to prove successful the compound the US Food and Drug Administration will put it on a fast track - making a drug available to humans within a matter of years.

"The discovery of these important properties in a simple compound - flavonoids - was very surprising," said Dr Iwu.

"The structure of this compound lends itself to modification, so it provides a template for future work.

"Even if this particular drug does not succeed through the whole drug approval process, we can use it to construct a new drug for this deadly disease."