Some West Africans Are Immune to Ebola, Say Experts
Written by Chukwuma Muanya (Lagos), Hendrix Oliomogbe (Asaba), Isa Abdusalami Ahovi (Jos), Kelvin Ebiri (Port Harcourt) and Itunu Ajayi (Abuja)
Nigerian Guardian
SOME virologists who specialise in Ebola are suspecting that part of the population in West Africa is immune to the virus, and that members of the special group can play a crucial role in efforts to contain the epidemic.
In a publication in New York Times, Donald Mcneil Jr reported that if the experts are correct, and if those people can be identified, they could be a great help in fighting the outbreak. “Immune persons could safely tend the sick and bury the dead just as small pox survivors did in the centuries before smallpox vaccine. Also, antibodies could be harvested from their blood to treat new Ebola victims.”
Anxious residents of the Delta State capital of Asaba can now heave a sigh of life as a series of tests on the suspected carrier of the deadly Ebola virus have been reported to be negative.
The patient, a woman, was said to have arrived from Lagos last Thursday, checked into the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Asaba seeking medical attention but showed the level of discomfiture that elicited suspicion of a probable Ebola disease while waiting to be attended to by the medical personnel.
The Commissioner for Information, Mr. Chikle Ogeah who spoke in Asaba yesterday said the patient was immediately isolated while samples of her blood were taken for test for Ebola, adding happily that the result, when it came out the next day, on Friday, September 5 turned out to be negative. “The patient has since been admitted into FMC, Asaba and is receiving treatment for the other ailments that were diagnosed.”
The Rotary Club of Garki, Abuja at the weekend took an anti-Ebola campaign to the Garki modern market. President of the club, Oye Oyewo, explained that the reason for the campaign in the market was the fact that markets are always crowded and people need to know how to protect themselves against the virus. “If you look at the market environment, you will find out that it is always crowded and if you look at Ebola virus, the way it transmits from one person to another, it is by body fluid. So, in doing business, they could contact this virus, that is why we chose Garki market to come and sensitise them about Ebola virus,” he said.
Meanwhile, an appraisal of the socio-economic realities in and around Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone reveals that the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is having a serious economic impact on the three West African countries most hit by the dreaded virus.
“Airlines have canceled their flights to the countries most affected. Prices of staple goods are going up, and food supplies are dwindling. Border posts are being closed, foreign workers are going home and national growth rates are projected to plummet,” Adam Nossitersept wrote in an article published in New York Times.
But many factors remain unclear on the issue of immunity, including which Africans have antibodies and how much antibody is needed to be protective. “The biggest mystery is how the immunity arose, and there is a mix of explanations, like silent infections and fruit contaminated with bat saliva. It’s fair to say that some people are immune,” said Robert F. Garry Jr., a Tulane University expert in hemorrhagic fevers who works in Sierra Leone. “But we don’t know if it’s 1 per cent or 2 per cent or 20 per cent. Right now, there are about 1,800 survivors of the current West African outbreak, all of whom are now immune, of course. But there may be many thousands more.”
According to Mcneil report, small studies of household contacts of Ebola victims show that some people are infected without ever falling ill — perhaps because of some unknown genetic advantage. But many Africans who have never seen a victim also have antibodies. It is possible that some get low doses of virus by eating infected monkeys or bats that are undercooked.
“If someone got just two or three or four virus particles, if it enters through the mucus membranes in the mouth, yes, it’s plausible,” said Thomas W. Geisbert, a hemorrhagic fever expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “It would take a while for the virus to get going, and it’s a race with the clock. The immune system gets a chance to fight it off.”
The report says antibodies, Y-shaped proteins that attach to a virus and block it from invading cells, are the immune system’s first line of defence; the second line is white blood cells primed to recognise and digest the virus.
One of France’s leading Ebola experts was quoted as saying he believes that many rural villagers are “vaccinated” by eating fruit gnawed on by bats and contaminated with their saliva. “We imagine that this is the main route,” said Dr. Eric Leroy, a veterinarian and virologist at the International Center for Medical Research in Franceville, Gabon. “But it is a hypothesis. We do not have the evidence.”
Determining the overall level of immunity in West Africa would require testing thousands of blood samples, an impossible task in the current chaos, especially when any slip of a needle or a broken vial could fatally infect a health worker.
But in 2010, Leroy led such a study in Gabon, a Central African country that had four Ebola outbreaks from 1994 to 2002.
His teams took 4,349 blood samples in 220 randomly selected villages. They found that 15 per cent of Gabon’s population had antibodies. But it varied widely: near the coast, only 3 per cent did; in some jungle villages near the Congo border, up to 34 per cent did.
Also, their antibody levels varied widely, and what level is protective is roughly known for lab monkeys, but not for humans.
“I don’t think we have a good idea of what constitutes a person who’s going to survive versus a person who’s going to succumb,” said Randal J. Schoepp, head of diagnostics at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., who led a study of blood from patients in a Sierra Leone hospital who were originally thought to have Lassa fever but did not. Nearly nine per cent had Ebola antibodies — and the samples dated from as far back as 2006, proving that the virus circulated long before this year’s outbreak.
Also, there is anecdotal evidence that some West Africans are resistant. Victims have relatives who never get sick. At the funeral of a traditional healer where 14 women became infected, at least 26 other mourners did not, Dr. Garry said, even though most probably touched the body.
The World health Organisation (WHO) has put Liberia’s Ebola fatality rate at 67 per cent, followed by Guinea with 59 per cent and Sierra Leone with, 39 per cent. In the Disease Outbreak News released yesterday, the global health body puts Nigeria’s Ebola fatality rate at 37.5 per cent with 22 confirmed cases and eight deaths.
According to Nossitersept, both the financial and social consequences of Ebola are being aggravated by these countries and their frightened neighbours by imposing what he described as concentric circles of quarantines and cutting off neighbourhoods and regions.
He noted that “International medical authorities have warned against such practices, arguing that they will worsen suffering and deprivation, and do little to stop the spread of the disease. But many African nations have gone ahead anyway, sealing borders, barring entry to residents of the affected countries and barring their airlines from flying to those countries. Senegal has even refused to allow humanitarian flights with urgently needed supplies and medical personnel to take off from Dakar, the West African hub for international aid agencies. South Africa and Kenya, two of the continent’s economic heavyweights, have restricted entry to people coming from the Ebola zone.”
At a meeting in Ghana last week, the WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, Luis Gomes Sambo, said for the worst-hit countries, “isolating and stigmatising them and making it difficult to transport supplies, personnel and other resources” can only make things worse.
Nossitersept said for three nations that have only recently emerged from decades of war and political upheaval, Ebola has dealt a hard blow. He quoted Liberia’s Finance Minister, Amara Konneh as saying, in an interview, that “After a decade of conflict we were set to restore the economy to its prewar status. This outbreak is dealing a serious blow to all of our efforts. This is the biggest crisis we have faced since the end of our civil war.”
With sections of Liberia and Sierra Leone under quarantine and the borders of Senegal and Guinea sealed, the movement of goods has slowed. National budgets are under strain, health care expenditures are rising, government revenues are dropping and agricultural production, especially in Sierra Leone, has been hurt. South Africa is barring entry to non-South Africans who have been in the affected countries, and Kenya and Senegal are practicing similar measures.
In Rivers State, the National Union of Road Transport Workers has appealed to the government to avail its members with thermometers and hand sanitizers.
The union’s secretary at the Mile 3 Park, Port Harcourt, Mr. Cyprian Amadi said the appeal became imperative following the death of Dr. Ike Enemuo from the disease in Port Harcourt.
He spoke during an Ebola sensitisation rally organised by the National Association of Seadogs (NAS), Rivers State chapter in Port Harcourt at the weekend.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jos, Prof. Hayward Babale Mafuyai, at the weekend (Saturday) inaugurated an Ebola Preparedness Committee to enlighten staff and students on the virus and how to prevent its spread.
Inaugurating the committee in his office, Mafuyai said government viewed the Ebola epidemic as a matter of serious concern. He stated that during the last committee of vice-chancellors’ meeting, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC) warned that any university that recorded any case of the Ebola virus would be shut down.
He was quick to advise that the warning should not stop the committee from reporting a case where they detect one, pointing out that the vice chancellors were instructed not to admit students from the Ebola-infected countries and they should restrict such students from travelling back to their countries.
 |
| Map showing early outbreaks of Ebola Virus Disease. The number of cases have grown to over 4,000 by early Sept. 2014. |
Nigerian Guardian
SOME virologists who specialise in Ebola are suspecting that part of the population in West Africa is immune to the virus, and that members of the special group can play a crucial role in efforts to contain the epidemic.
In a publication in New York Times, Donald Mcneil Jr reported that if the experts are correct, and if those people can be identified, they could be a great help in fighting the outbreak. “Immune persons could safely tend the sick and bury the dead just as small pox survivors did in the centuries before smallpox vaccine. Also, antibodies could be harvested from their blood to treat new Ebola victims.”
Anxious residents of the Delta State capital of Asaba can now heave a sigh of life as a series of tests on the suspected carrier of the deadly Ebola virus have been reported to be negative.
The patient, a woman, was said to have arrived from Lagos last Thursday, checked into the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Asaba seeking medical attention but showed the level of discomfiture that elicited suspicion of a probable Ebola disease while waiting to be attended to by the medical personnel.
The Commissioner for Information, Mr. Chikle Ogeah who spoke in Asaba yesterday said the patient was immediately isolated while samples of her blood were taken for test for Ebola, adding happily that the result, when it came out the next day, on Friday, September 5 turned out to be negative. “The patient has since been admitted into FMC, Asaba and is receiving treatment for the other ailments that were diagnosed.”
The Rotary Club of Garki, Abuja at the weekend took an anti-Ebola campaign to the Garki modern market. President of the club, Oye Oyewo, explained that the reason for the campaign in the market was the fact that markets are always crowded and people need to know how to protect themselves against the virus. “If you look at the market environment, you will find out that it is always crowded and if you look at Ebola virus, the way it transmits from one person to another, it is by body fluid. So, in doing business, they could contact this virus, that is why we chose Garki market to come and sensitise them about Ebola virus,” he said.
Meanwhile, an appraisal of the socio-economic realities in and around Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone reveals that the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is having a serious economic impact on the three West African countries most hit by the dreaded virus.
“Airlines have canceled their flights to the countries most affected. Prices of staple goods are going up, and food supplies are dwindling. Border posts are being closed, foreign workers are going home and national growth rates are projected to plummet,” Adam Nossitersept wrote in an article published in New York Times.
But many factors remain unclear on the issue of immunity, including which Africans have antibodies and how much antibody is needed to be protective. “The biggest mystery is how the immunity arose, and there is a mix of explanations, like silent infections and fruit contaminated with bat saliva. It’s fair to say that some people are immune,” said Robert F. Garry Jr., a Tulane University expert in hemorrhagic fevers who works in Sierra Leone. “But we don’t know if it’s 1 per cent or 2 per cent or 20 per cent. Right now, there are about 1,800 survivors of the current West African outbreak, all of whom are now immune, of course. But there may be many thousands more.”
According to Mcneil report, small studies of household contacts of Ebola victims show that some people are infected without ever falling ill — perhaps because of some unknown genetic advantage. But many Africans who have never seen a victim also have antibodies. It is possible that some get low doses of virus by eating infected monkeys or bats that are undercooked.
“If someone got just two or three or four virus particles, if it enters through the mucus membranes in the mouth, yes, it’s plausible,” said Thomas W. Geisbert, a hemorrhagic fever expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “It would take a while for the virus to get going, and it’s a race with the clock. The immune system gets a chance to fight it off.”
The report says antibodies, Y-shaped proteins that attach to a virus and block it from invading cells, are the immune system’s first line of defence; the second line is white blood cells primed to recognise and digest the virus.
One of France’s leading Ebola experts was quoted as saying he believes that many rural villagers are “vaccinated” by eating fruit gnawed on by bats and contaminated with their saliva. “We imagine that this is the main route,” said Dr. Eric Leroy, a veterinarian and virologist at the International Center for Medical Research in Franceville, Gabon. “But it is a hypothesis. We do not have the evidence.”
Determining the overall level of immunity in West Africa would require testing thousands of blood samples, an impossible task in the current chaos, especially when any slip of a needle or a broken vial could fatally infect a health worker.
But in 2010, Leroy led such a study in Gabon, a Central African country that had four Ebola outbreaks from 1994 to 2002.
His teams took 4,349 blood samples in 220 randomly selected villages. They found that 15 per cent of Gabon’s population had antibodies. But it varied widely: near the coast, only 3 per cent did; in some jungle villages near the Congo border, up to 34 per cent did.
Also, their antibody levels varied widely, and what level is protective is roughly known for lab monkeys, but not for humans.
“I don’t think we have a good idea of what constitutes a person who’s going to survive versus a person who’s going to succumb,” said Randal J. Schoepp, head of diagnostics at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., who led a study of blood from patients in a Sierra Leone hospital who were originally thought to have Lassa fever but did not. Nearly nine per cent had Ebola antibodies — and the samples dated from as far back as 2006, proving that the virus circulated long before this year’s outbreak.
Also, there is anecdotal evidence that some West Africans are resistant. Victims have relatives who never get sick. At the funeral of a traditional healer where 14 women became infected, at least 26 other mourners did not, Dr. Garry said, even though most probably touched the body.
The World health Organisation (WHO) has put Liberia’s Ebola fatality rate at 67 per cent, followed by Guinea with 59 per cent and Sierra Leone with, 39 per cent. In the Disease Outbreak News released yesterday, the global health body puts Nigeria’s Ebola fatality rate at 37.5 per cent with 22 confirmed cases and eight deaths.
According to Nossitersept, both the financial and social consequences of Ebola are being aggravated by these countries and their frightened neighbours by imposing what he described as concentric circles of quarantines and cutting off neighbourhoods and regions.
He noted that “International medical authorities have warned against such practices, arguing that they will worsen suffering and deprivation, and do little to stop the spread of the disease. But many African nations have gone ahead anyway, sealing borders, barring entry to residents of the affected countries and barring their airlines from flying to those countries. Senegal has even refused to allow humanitarian flights with urgently needed supplies and medical personnel to take off from Dakar, the West African hub for international aid agencies. South Africa and Kenya, two of the continent’s economic heavyweights, have restricted entry to people coming from the Ebola zone.”
At a meeting in Ghana last week, the WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, Luis Gomes Sambo, said for the worst-hit countries, “isolating and stigmatising them and making it difficult to transport supplies, personnel and other resources” can only make things worse.
Nossitersept said for three nations that have only recently emerged from decades of war and political upheaval, Ebola has dealt a hard blow. He quoted Liberia’s Finance Minister, Amara Konneh as saying, in an interview, that “After a decade of conflict we were set to restore the economy to its prewar status. This outbreak is dealing a serious blow to all of our efforts. This is the biggest crisis we have faced since the end of our civil war.”
With sections of Liberia and Sierra Leone under quarantine and the borders of Senegal and Guinea sealed, the movement of goods has slowed. National budgets are under strain, health care expenditures are rising, government revenues are dropping and agricultural production, especially in Sierra Leone, has been hurt. South Africa is barring entry to non-South Africans who have been in the affected countries, and Kenya and Senegal are practicing similar measures.
In Rivers State, the National Union of Road Transport Workers has appealed to the government to avail its members with thermometers and hand sanitizers.
The union’s secretary at the Mile 3 Park, Port Harcourt, Mr. Cyprian Amadi said the appeal became imperative following the death of Dr. Ike Enemuo from the disease in Port Harcourt.
He spoke during an Ebola sensitisation rally organised by the National Association of Seadogs (NAS), Rivers State chapter in Port Harcourt at the weekend.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jos, Prof. Hayward Babale Mafuyai, at the weekend (Saturday) inaugurated an Ebola Preparedness Committee to enlighten staff and students on the virus and how to prevent its spread.
Inaugurating the committee in his office, Mafuyai said government viewed the Ebola epidemic as a matter of serious concern. He stated that during the last committee of vice-chancellors’ meeting, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC) warned that any university that recorded any case of the Ebola virus would be shut down.
He was quick to advise that the warning should not stop the committee from reporting a case where they detect one, pointing out that the vice chancellors were instructed not to admit students from the Ebola-infected countries and they should restrict such students from travelling back to their countries.
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