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As West Africa is in the grip of its worst Ebola outbreak, Sadc health ministers met in South Africa yesterday to discuss measures to prevent its spread and respond to it in the unlikely event it occurs here.
The latest Ebola outbreak has affected Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the most widespread in the disease’s 38-year documented history. About 887 people had died of it by yesterday, in 1,603 cases since March.
A highly contagious disease, Ebola haemorrhagic fever or Ebola virus disease is caused by the Ebola virus. The virus can be acquired upon contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected person or animal, usually monkeys and fruit bats. Its symptoms often start two days to three weeks after contracting the virus, with a fever, sore throat, muscle pains, and headaches. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea follow, along with decreased functioning of the liver and kidneys. At this advanced stage, the infected people begin to suffer bleeding problems. The disease occurs in the tropics of sub-Saharan Africa.
The savagery with which it kills — blood oozing out through all a person’s openings – makes it one of the globe’s most virulent and frightening diseases. It is so malevolent that it looks like it was cultured in a laboratory.
Fearful that it might spread into Southern Africa, ministers of health met in South Africa yesterday. Before the meeting, governments in the region had already been on alert. On its part, Zimbabwe is monitoring the situation at its ports of entry as well as airports.
The region is in no immediate danger of the disease because the natural conditions that cause and sustain it in West Africa are non-existent here, but an infected person from the three afflicted countries can bring it here, and possibly transmit it to the people with whom he or she gets in contact.
Sadc health ministers and the secretariat must be applauded for their proactive move. It is always wise to be ready for a disaster so that if and when it strikes it would be easy for authorities to activate existing response mechanisms promptly.
Apart from its health implications, Ebola has wreaked havoc on business. Airlines serving West Africa have stepped up passenger screening to prevent its inadvertent export. Passengers on Air France, for example, must complete health questionnaires and be checked for symptoms, among them high temperature, before they are issued with boarding cards. British Airways and Emirates have suspended flights to and from West Africa.
The biggest challenge with Ebola is that there is neither a vaccine nor cure for it. Between six and nine out of every 10 cases usually end in death.
The other is that the disease sometimes affects medical personnel trying to help the infected. In the end, the afflicted die painful deaths alone, like lepers in the olden days, without treatment and care as doctors and nurses fear for their own lives. Four doctors have contracted the malignant virus since March, among them two Americans and one Nigerian.
But there is a hope in far-away Kentucky, US, where a company has come up with a tobacco-based drug, for now on an experimental stage. ZMpp was administered on two Americans who contracted Ebola in Liberia last week. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol have a chance of survival after they improved after taking it.
As Africa battles another public health challenge, we are reminded about the continent’s continued entrusting of its health in foreign hands.
It is most revealing that ZMpp was hurriedly airlifted to Liberia, specifically for Brantly and Writebol, in a region where 887 Africans have died and 1,603 sickened by it. Both are said to be responding well to treatment, but not so for the dozens of Africans suffering in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. We must be asking themselves why the drug that is being tried on Brantly and Writebol cannot be tried on our African brothers and sisters in West Africa as well.
The only Zimbabwean closest to the afflicted is Dr Charimari who flew to Sierra Leone recently to help in the Ebola response. He is our ambassador and we wish him sound health as we do to everyone infected in the three countries and the two Americans.
We hope that the Sadc ministers at their South Africa meeting didn’t confine their deliberations only on screening of people travelling into the region from West Africa, but discussed tangible, longer term ways by which the continent can manufacture drugs, using its own resources and skills to treat a whole range of diseases – Aids, malaria, TB, cancer, Ebola and others.
Relying on the benevolence of the West is not sustainable at all.
derick.khumalo