The United States of America,
yesterday, dashed the hope of an early cure for Ebola Virus victims in Nigeria
when it refused to share the trial drug with Nigeria. US President Barak Obama
says it would be premature to share the experimental drug with Africa.
The Federal Government had earlier
reached out to the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention,
CDC, in Atlanta, to request for the drug for treatment of EVD affected persons
in Nigeria, but President Obama turned down the request, saying it would be far
more beneficial to focus on prevention instead.
Nigeria recorded its first Ebola
Virus disease fatality on Tuesday when one of the nurses who was one of the
primary contacts of the American-Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, passed on. The
doctor who treated Sawyer, who died in the country after flying into Lagos, is
now ill with Ebola and six other primary contacts are currently ill with the
disease in a Lagos hospital where they are quarantined.
Minister of Health, Professor
Onyebuchi Chukwu and Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku had disclosed on
Wednesday after the Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja that the Federal
Government was awaiting the response of the request it made to the CDC on
Tuesday.
Addressing the 50 African leaders at
the US-African Summit in Washington, President Obama stated that it is
“premature” to send an experimental medicine for the treatment of Ebola to West
Africa, as he lacked enough information to approve the drug that was already
being used on two American aid workers whose conditions were said to have improved
by varying degrees.
“We’ve got to let the science guide
us and I don’t think all the information is in on whether this drug is helpful.
The Ebola virus, both currently and in the past, is controllable if you have a
strong public health infrastructure in place.
“The countries affected are the
first to admit that what’s happened here is the public health systems have been
overwhelmed. They weren’t able to identify and then isolate cases quickly
enough.
“As a consequence, it spread more
rapidly than has been typical with the periodic Ebola outbreaks that occurred
previously,” he remarked.
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