Nigeria has put in an urgent request for the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp following the country’s third death from the virus that is tearing through its West African neighbours.
Information Minister Labaran Maku is awaiting a response from the US Centre for Disease Control to an official request for the as yet unapproved drug. Nigeria’s appeal follows World Health Organisation (WHO) permission for untested treatments to be administered to Ebola victims in view of the seriousness and rapid spread of the epidemic and news that Canada’s Public Health Agency would be providing the WHO with up to 1000 doses of the drug.
Controversially, ZMapp has already been administered to two doctors in Liberia and two aid workers who have been returned to America. A Spanish priest who returned to Madrid after becoming infected succumbed to the disease despite having been given ZMapp. Critics have been quick to point out that none of the recipients of the potentially life-saving treatment has been African.
Latest figures suggest that there have been ten people infected in Nigeria so far, three of whom have since died. Another 140 people are either showing possible symptoms of have come into contact with known victims. These figures must be of major concern to the wider international community, coming as they do from Africa’s largest and most populous nation.
Flights travel from capital Abuja and former capital Lagos to major cities worldwide on a daily basis. This is in marked contrast to Liberia and Guinea from where passengers can be relatively easily monitored or denied travel.
The latest death from the Ebola virus in Nigeria at the time of writing is that of 36-year-old government official Jatto Asihu Abdulqudir. He had been in contact with Liberian government consultant Patrick Sawyer, who was the first person to die of Ebola in Nigeria on 25 July.
Sawyer had been allowed to fly from Liberia to Nigeria on official business despite having previously been put in isolation by his employer AncelorMittal, who suspected he was at high risk of contracting the disease from his sister who died in early July. According to CCTV, Mr Sawyer appeared unwell at the airport prior to boarding his flight to Murtala Mohammed Airport; at one point apparently feeling compelled to lie face down in an airport corridor. He subsequently became so unwell during his flight that he was whisked away to First Consultant Hospital in Obalende immediately upon landing.
Shockingly, officials at the hospital say they turned down repeated requests from Sawyer’s employer to discharge him so that he could attend an ECOWAS conference in Calabar.
Unless Nigeria is granted its request for the ZMapp vaccine, one can only speculate as to the international reaction to travellers from Africa’s commercial hub. Gambia, Ivory Coast and Zambia have already banned flights from Nigeria, and Zambia has said Nigerian passengers would be quarantined for 30 days before being permitted to enter the country.
There were 1 800 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola and more than 1 000 deaths as of 9 August, according to WHO statistics. Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, which share a border, have been the hardest-hit countries.
