The "new drug" Zmapp developed by Americans is an antiserum produced in an animal. We can also use plasma from human survivors to treat Ebola patients because their blood contains antibodies that are strong enough to fight off the virus. This antiserum technique was actually developed by Congolese medical specialists, especially Dr Mupapa, during the Ebola outbreak in Congo back in 1995. It cured 8 out of 9 patients. It is also referred to as convalescent serum transfusion.

Why aren't African medical specialists looking to develop these and other treatments during this outbreak? Or are they, and we're just not hearing about it? Antiserums are supposedly VERY EASY to produce as long as you have enough survivors which we do. We shouldn't be begging USA for their antiserum or what am I missing here?

Mupapa, K; Massamba, M; Kibadi,... (1999). "Treatment of Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever with Blood Transfusions from Convalescent Patients (suppl 1)". The Journal of Infectious Diseases (Volume 179): S18–S23. doi:10.1086/514298. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/Supplement_1/S18.full?sid=b139b993-6946-4bf7-a999-9fc837193bda

http://www.doctorscallroom.com/2014/08/zmapp-nigerias-request-for-ebola-virus.html

red101:
Why aren't African medical specialists looking to develop these and other treatments during this outbreak? Or are they, and we're just not hearing about it? Antiserums are supposedly VERY EASY to produce as long as you have enough survivors which we do. We shouldn't be begging USA for their antiserum or what am I missing here?

Because we are not investing heavily in science and tech.....as a result we do not have the facilities for advanced immunology-related research.

bushdoc9919:

Because we are not investing heavily in science and tech.....as a result we do not have the facilities for advanced immunology-related research.

More like because Africa is a basket case with no form of documentation or follow up research being conducted on anything other than dirty politics n corruption. We tend to leave everything to the western world (our overlords) to do. Must seem like I am ranting now, because I enranged! This is the reason I refer to our intellectual elite as the "Brain dead intellectuals" the ones who wait for theories and hypothesis made up by Europeans and Americans and then start quoting them on TV without even verifying their authenticity. How is it that we say no cure yet this man managed to treat 8 out of 9, no cure yet 2 Americans and 1 Spaniard got treated. How is it that this man managed to do this as far back as 95 in freaking AFRICA yet this disease still ravages Africa? And no one has reached out to him in the past 19 years since he achieved that feat. We act like a bunch of mentally lazy, reactive, dimwits all put in one continent waiting to be eradicated from the surface of the earth with little or nothing to be accounted for historically

BTW front page pls!!!!

there is nothing too "advanced" in this. We can contact survivors in liberia and sierra leone and ask them for blood donations. It shouldn't be difficult to conduct the transfusions once we get enough plasma. I mean of course prevention is the best cure so good quarantine methods with lots of health workers to track down and record contacts etc.

red101: there is nothing too "advanced" in this. We can contact survivors in liberia and sierra leone and ask them for blood donations. It shouldn't be difficult to conduct the transfusions once we get enough plasma. I mean of course prevention is the best cure so good quarantine methods with lots of health workers to track down and record contacts etc.

You need a well documented record of all survivors first, and then capable hands. Question is why hasn't this been implemented in the other countries? We wouldn't have this big delicate mess if it had.

phreakabit:
You need a well documented record of all survivors first, and then capable hands. Question is why hasn't this been implemented in the other countries? We wouldn't have this big delicate mess if it had.

Yes. and usually in a case where survival rate is less than 30%, tons of people die before you can get enough survivors to help treat patients.
I don't really blame them. What I see is an opportunity for Nigeria because we don't need to have a lot of deaths in order to obtain those survivors. we can use the ones in liberia etc.
But in the past 20yrs, we have not studied this virus and prepared for it. Otherwise, we would be ready like the Americans were. They figured out a way to produce the antibody serum in animals so plenty yrs of research must have gone into it.
The first time I heard about Ebola was about 10 yrs ago as a high school student here in USA. all students in my grade were required to read a book on it. Yet most Africans weren't even aware let alone actively creating treatments to treat potential future outbreaks.

This documentary is from 1999 and is about the 1995 outbreak in Congo
starting at 40min it explains this experimental treatment method. The congolese doctors hid the plan from the foreign specialists because the foreign doctors were wary of the risks. It worked anyway but yes, a lot of research needs to go into it to create stable forms like the zmapp.
but in an emergency like this, we have to start somewhere.

fast forward to 40min. The congolese doctors used the treatment successfully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHr97IDEjiM

The doctors wrote this report in 1999
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/Supplement_1/S18.full?sid=b139b993-6946-4bf7-a999-9fc837193bda

red101:

Yes. and usually in a case where survival rate is less than 30%, tons of people die before you can get enough survivors to help treat patients.
I don't really blame them. What I see is an opportunity for Nigeria because we don't need to have a lot of deaths in order to obtain those survivors. we can use the ones in liberia etc.
But in the past 20yrs, we have not studied this virus and prepared for it. Otherwise, we would be ready like the Americans were. They figured out a way to produce the antibody serum in animals so plenty yrs of research must have gone into it.
The first time I heard about Ebola was about 10 yrs ago as a high school student here in USA. all students in my grade were required to read a book on it. Yet most Africans weren't even aware let alone actively creating treatments to treat potential future outbreaks.

Well I studied all my life here in Nigeria and my area of expertise is Computers however, I first heard about the Virus at about the same time as you. Bewilders me how our medical experts act as though they know nothing about the virus. We should have been prepared for something like this. Being proactive is the key, but then again we have farmers heading our disease control and health ministries.

^that's good to know that people weren't completely oblivious. I think this outbreak will be a lesson for us to get our acts together.

A dose of “experimental serum” (zmapp) arrived in Liberia to be tried on a U.S. charity worker struggling for her life — but there was only enough for one of the two infected workers, so Dr. Kent Brantly asked that it be used on his colleague, the group Samaritan’s Purse said Thursday.

Dr. Brantly, a doctor with the group who was also infected, tried an alternative treatment, using blood transfused from a young survivor of the virus.

“Yesterday, an experimental serum arrived in the country, but there was only enough for one person. Dr. Brantly asked that it be given to Nancy Writebol,” Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse, said in a statement. “However, Dr. Brantly received a unit of blood from a 14-year-old boy who had survived Ebola because of Dr. Brantly’s care. The young boy and his family wanted to be able to help the doctor that saved his life.”

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1025435/pg1
http://www.newsweek.com/20-year-old-ebola-treatment-could-save-kent-brantly-262552

red101: ^that's good to know that people weren't completely oblivious. I think this outbreak will be a lesson for us to get our acts together.

Not sure if you are conversant with the "African reasoning", but we never learn! Its almost as if we take pride in it. Funny how we still can't contain Malaria when in other 3rd world countries outside Africa mosquito nets and other precautionery items are being distributed just before the raining season starts.

https://www.nairaland.com/1889678/ebola-survivors-blood-used-treatment

I'm surprised it took so long.

red101: https://www.nairaland.com/1889678/ebola-survivors-blood-used-treatment

I'm surprised it took so long.

Not surprised. Profiteers at the WHO were probably signing contracts and exhausting every form of money making on marketable "serums" et al before bringing this to the fore. It is funny how only when alternative treatments/drugs from Japan and China were announced, did this become the "recommended" treatment by WHO. . . . . I might be wrong, but who knows? . . .