Thousands of West Africans who were infected with the Ebola virus but survived it are suffering chronic conditions such as serious joint pain and eye inflammation that can lead to blindness, global health experts have said.
A picture taken on July 24, 2014 shows staff of the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse putting on protective gear in the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia. An American doctor battling West Africa’s Ebola epidemic has himself fallen sick with the disease in Liberia, Samaritan’s Purse said on July 27. AFP PHOTO
Ebola survivors who fought off the most severe bouts of infection are the most likely to suffer ongoing medical problems, World Health Organization experts said, and their health is becoming “an emergency within an emergency.”
“The world has never seen such a large number of survivors from an Ebola outbreak,” said Anders Nordstrom, a WHO representative in Sierra Leone who took part in a five-day conference this week about Ebola survivors.
“We have 13,000 survivors in the three countries (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone). This is new – both from a medical and from a societal point of view,” Reuters quoted Nordstrom as saying to reporters on a telebriefing.
Daniel Bausch of the WHO’s clinical care team on Ebola survivors said about half of all those who fought off the virus now report joint pain, with some suffering such severe effects that they can’t work.
Eye problems including inflammation, impaired vision and – in severe but rare cases – blindness, have been reported by about 25 percent of survivors, Bausch said.
Less measurable but equally serious long-term problems, such as increasing rates of depression, post traumatic stress disorder and social exclusion, are also affecting survivors.
Since West Africa’s devastating Ebola epidemic was by far the largest ever seen – infecting more than 27,000 people and killing almost 11,300 of them – scientists are not able to say whether survivors’ chronic health problems are unusual.
Sperm can carry the Ebola virus for at least 82 days, the World Health Organization said Friday, urging men recovering from the disease to use condoms for three months after the onset of symptoms.
“Because of the potential to transmit the virus sexually during this time, they should maintain good personal hygiene after masturbation, and either abstain from sex (including oral sex) for three months after onset of symptoms, or use condoms if abstinence is not possible,” the WHO said in a statement.
In four studies, on a total of 43 patients, three men who had recovered from Ebola still had the live virus in their semen 40 days, 61 days and 82 days respectively after the onset of symptoms.
The WHO said that no case of sexual transmission of Ebola had been documented, and that it was unclear whether semen that tests positive for Ebola is actually infectious.
The four studies were carried out in different countries, with the first dating back more than 30 years.
Ebola is highly contagious but, even if a person is infected, the virus can only be passed on once symptoms appear and only through direct contact with bodily fluids.
Symptoms of Ebola include fever, headache, diarrhea, vomiting and in some cases bleeding.
The biggest Ebola epidemic on record has claimed around 5,700 lives since the beginning of the year, according to the WHO — almost all of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Nigeria has been declared officially free of Ebola after six weeks with no new cases, the World Health Organisation says.
A picture taken on July 24, 2014 shows staff of the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse putting on protective gear in the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia. An American doctor battling West Africa’s Ebola epidemic has himself fallen sick with the disease in Liberia, Samaritan’s Purse said on July 27. AFP PHOTO
Africa’s most populous country won praise for its swift response after an infected Liberian diplomat brought the disease there in July.
The WHO officially declared Senegal Ebola-free on Friday.
The outbreak has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
An estimated 70 per cent of those infected have died in those countries.
Meanwhile, European Union foreign ministers are meeting in Luxembourg to discuss how to strengthen their response to the threat posed by Ebola.
European countries have committed more than 500m euros (£400m; $600m) but the UK is pressing to double that amount.
The money is being sought to help reinforce over-stretched healthcare systems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and to mitigate the damage Ebola is doing to their economies.
Ahead of the talks, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier suggested the EU could send a civilian EU mission to West Africa that would serve as a platform for sending medical staff.
Another diplomat said there were plans for three countries to spearhead aid to the region – the UK for Sierra Leone, France for Guinea and the US for Liberia.
Earlier, the Spanish government said a nurse who became the first person to contract Ebola outside West Africa had tested negative for the virus.
LAGOS (AFP) – An Ebola outbreak in Nigeria’s oil producing hub of Port Harcourt could spread wider and faster than in the financial capital, Lagos, the World Health Organization warned on Thursday.
Ebola
The UN health body said the virus’ arrival in Port Harcourt, 435 kilometres (270 miles) east of Lagos and home to oil and gas majors such as Shell, Total and Chevron, showed “multiple high-risk opportunities for transmission of the virus to others”.
Of the 255 people currently under surveillance for signs of the disease, the WHO said 60 were considered to have had “high-risk or very high-risk exposure”.
Until the Port Harcourt case was announced, Nigeria’s government had indicated that the virus was contained in Lagos.
But the warning will raise fears about the spread of the virus in Africa’s most populous nation, top economy and biggest oil producer plus its health sector’s ability to cope with a wider outbreak.
Ebola, which has hit five countries in West Africa and caused nearly 2,000 deaths this year, first arrived in Nigeria when a Liberian finance ministry official died in Lagos on July 25.
He was taken from the city’s airport to a private hospital by two officials from the West African regional bloc ECOWAS.
One of the officials later died of the disease but the other evaded detection to travel to Port Harcourt, where he fell ill and was treated in secret at a city hotel room by medical doctor Ike Enemuo from August 1-3.
The ECOWAS official recovered but the WHO said Enemuo continued to treat patients at his private clinic and operated on at least two people, despite showing symptoms of Ebola from August 11.
He was taken to hospital on August 13 after his symptoms worsened but before that had “numerous contacts with the community”, including visits from family and friends to celebrate a birth.
In hospital, members of his church visited “to perform a healing ritual said to involve the laying on of hands”, while “the majority” of staff treated him before his death, the WHO said.
“Given these multiple high-risk exposure opportunities, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos,” it added.
There have been three confirmed case of Ebola in Port Harcourt so far, including Enemuo. Seven people have died in Nigeria in total out of 18 confirmed cases.
An elderly woman who was a patient at the hospital where Enemuo was treated died from the disease.
Enemuo’s wife — who is also a doctor — was in an isolation unit in Lagos, while his sister was under quarantine in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said on Wednesday.
The WHO said family members, healthcare workers and patients at the hospital where Enemuo was treated were at the most risk with church members who visited him.
Nigeria’s federal government is currently working with its counterparts in Rivers State, the WHO, UN children’s fund UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on emergency measures to contain Ebola.
In addition to a 26-bed isolation facility 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of Port Harcourt, a mobile laboratory is in the city to help diagnose cases.
WHO-trained contact tracing and decontamination specialists are on the ground with burial teams, given that Ebola is transmissible even after death.
But for the ill-conceived visit of Patrick Sawyer, the American-Liberian who brought the killer Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) to Nigeria on July 20, the country may have been spared the scourge being unleashed on its citizenry.
Sawyer, who knew he had the deadly infection, flew into Lagos on July 20 purporting to attend an ECOWAS conference in Calabar. But his widow, Mrs Decontee Sawyer, says Patrick came to Nigeria in search of a better healthcare services.
According to her, “Patrick went to Nigeria for help so that he can get properly diagnosed, and not misdiagnosed as was the case in Liberia. And if it came back that he did have Ebola, he trusted the Nigerian healthcare system a lot more than he trusted the Liberian’s. His action, as it was, was a desperate plea for help. Patrick didn’t want to die, and he thought his life would be saved in Nigeria.”
Tragically, his search for life in Nigeria deposited a plague that is snuffing life from Nigerians.
He died four days after he was admitted at the First Consultants Medical Centre in Lagos, wherein he denied having contact with Ebola-infected persons. Whereas, his sister, Princess had died from the infection back in Liberia, and he most likely got infected, having participated in her burial. His reckless attitude at the hospital after his infection was confirmed, indicated that he was determined to infect as many as he could.
Sadly, all 10 persons who had direct contact with Sawyer have all tested positive to the disease. They have all been quarantined in an isolation ward at a Yaba hospital in Lagos. Of the number, four have died, while six are yet alive.
It is however instructive that as wild as the spread of the disease seems, the Nigerian authorities have striven to ensure a containment by ensuring that the infection does not spread beyond the 10 primary contacts with the index case: Patrick Sawyer.
Unfortunately, however, the 10 primary contacts had contact with some other members of the public, including family members. Thus almost 200 secondary contacts have all been put under surveillance in Lagos and Enugu.
Nonetheless, it is remarkable to note that none of the secondary contact persons, who are under surveillance has so far tested positive to the deadly virus.
What that indicates is that as long as the Nigerian medical authorities are able to rein-in all primary and secondary contacts and shield them from other members of the public as well as closely monitor them, the spread of the infection would have been greatly limited. And that will offer a reprieve, in a way.
It was as a result of the determination of the authorities to ensure that the spread of the disease is contained and quickly tamed, that the young female nurse who had primary contact with Sawyer at First Consultants, but travelled to Enugu to see her husband, was forced back to Lagos along with her husband, especially as she had tested positive to the virus.
Already, some 21 persons who came in contact with the nurse in Enugu were earlier placed under surveillance. However, 15 of them have been cleared of any infection while six remain under surveillance, after they had undergone extensive appraisal from medical experts.
Besides the effort at tracking and setting apart all confirmed or suspected victims of the infection, the government has placed all immigration on land and air borders on red alert. Already, flights to and from Ebola-infected countries have been suspended, just as passengers to and from even other countries are subjected to infrared thermo-scans to ensure that no infected persons leaves or escapes into the country.
Surely, the Nigerian authorities have responded firmly and comprehensively to the affliction, drawing the commendation of the United Nations. The best Nigerians can do at this stage is to pray that they remain unrelenting in their quest to curb the spread of the virus.
This will certainly be boosted if no further deaths are recorded, the chain is not broken by another primary contact who elects to travel or a secondary contact tests positive for Ebola.
