₦airaland Forum

logica: Give the dates of the outbreaks; it is called FACTS.

The Medical scientists were not there to help out so we have no information about it. or the outbreaks happen in rural areas where there were probably no local health officials.just babalawos maybe.
and because they were minor outbreaks, people just moved on with their lives once it was over. and maybe they went and perform sacrifices so that the "gods" won't be angry with them in the future. the outbreak was known as "period of amadioha's pestilence" tongue

logica: You are sure there were outbreaks before 1976; yet you cannot give us the dates. As you indicated, Africans never had cures for any diseases. We never knew what diseases were; yet we had herbs and various precautions? The "agbo" that your grandmother probably drank regularly; what did you think it was?

if you look at the list, you can deduce statistically that there were outbreaks before 1976.you have the major outbreaks and minor ones in between so based on the pattern from the data, I can conclude that there were previous outbreaks. at least minor ones.

it usually starts from bush animal handlers esp primates. ex. There was a report that one guy found a chimpanzee, cooked it and ate it with his family. Every single one of them died including a few close family members. This was never recorded only mentioned passingly in a news article I read a while ago. If you didn't know what the disease was, how can u claim that it originated in an european lab. that's just ludicrous.

one problem is that many parts of Africa are experiencing urbanization so it is easier for communicable viruses to spread faster esp into cities.

all I can tell you is to keep drinking your agbo and salt-water then.
herbal remedies can be a good thing for minor ailments and even then, it helps to have scientific evidence for its efficacy. but in case of a major illness, you should go to a medical facility. even salt water helps with things like a minor stomach pain sometimes. Just don't use it thinking it will cure Ebola. Ebola is a virus.
The virus was first discovered in 1976 by a Belgian scientist after a belgian nun contracted ebola in congo and some blood samples were sent to belgium for testing. Doesn't mean that the disease never existed in Africa before just because it was discovered (i.e studied under a microscope and all that lol) in 1976.
so because it was studied in Europe, to you that means it originated in Europe. very funny

Which music service do you use or like best?

I personally like grooveshark the most and like spotify the least. Spotify seem to mostly only contain contemporary pop songs.
I miss imeem back in the days before it got shut down. I could find ANY song on it.

ghostofsparta: Therefore it can be strongly established that this particular Ebola virus was intentionally engineered genetically, else why hasn't there been a single report of any Congolese afflicted with a malaise similar to that which this hemorrhage causing Ebola causes in their historical past? Well the question is not how they did it but why...

Strikingly, the first reported case of Ebola was in the Congo in 1976, and has lately jumped from the Congo to a distance of about 3,000km into the extreme end of West Afria, what’s going on? In addition, a straight line from the Congo/Sudan to Maiduguri, Nigeria is shorter than from the Congo/Sudan to Guinea. Human trafficking traffic from the Congo/Sudan to Maiduguri/Cameroon is higher than those from the Congo/Sudan to Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone. Why has there been no reported cases from the Maiduguri/Cameroon axis all this years? Therefore, the Ebola virus may have been planted deliberately in the forested zone of West Africa!

wow. can't believe anyone can be so ignorant.
Ebola did not "jump." There are many different strains of it and they are found in primates and a few other mammals. There have been several outbreaks since 1976 and i'm sure there were outbreaks before 1976. The 1976 one was just really big and got the attention of international world.
Another similar virus is the Marburg virus with similar symptoms. Also the Lassa fever with similar hemorrhage symptoms. These are viruses that transmit from animals to humans and are very deadly. They are nothing new to Africa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassa_fever
THe marburg virus was so named because the germans experienced it after importing monkeys from africa for pharmaceutical testing. Over 30 germans died from it and after that, there was an awareness about it.
Usually when these outbreaks happen in Africa we say it's the work of the 'gods" or "devil". We do not treat it as a medical problem. it is usually western countries that come in to describe it medically then a few ignorant ones among us, because we have never heard the "medical term" before, start saying it was 'imported'

here is the list of all the reported outbreaks. notice that the first one in the 70s was very fatal. doesn't it make you wonder that there must have been minor ones in the past that did not draw international attention and therefore was never recorded? There was a big one in the 90s too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks

SOLUTION:
Since there haven't being any cure yet aside from the experimental serum, I think the Lagos State and the Nigeria federal government should encourage alternative medicine practitioners from the sphere of traditional/indigenous root workers to come forward and prove the efficacy of their claims while being steadfast on their vow to arrest any Ebola-curing clergies and anyone peddling the ludicrous saltwater solution. Also what Lagosians need do is take precautionary measures as highlighted on EbolaFacts and tune in to 99.3 Nigerian Info for update about this issue.

how is the ludicrous saltwater solution different from traditional spiritual healer solution? In fact, the salt water solution may have come from an alternative medicine practitioner.

News like this makes me shake my head. Has "Magun" been cured yet? Or isn't it the case that when someone gets sick from these viruses, we stigmatize them and claim that they have sinned against the "spirits"?
http://josephomotayo..com/2010/12/magun-thunderbolt-story.html
http://www.nigerianeye.com/2014/01/two-brothers-die-of-thunderbolt-magun.html

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

phreakabit: Not too "premature" to use on d White man I guess. Laughing at those Africans dat celebrated Obama's election into presidency.

Obama did the right thing. There are some risk involved with the drug and if anything happens, we will be quick to point fingers and blame USA for using us as 'guinea pigs' etc. It has happened before so they don't want to risk it again. Besides, there is a short supply of the drug so it's probably going to be used for the lives that matter to US the most ie US citizens.

Also, there is actually good chance that Dr. Brantley was cured through blood transfusion from a 14 yr old Ebola survivor rather than with Zmapp.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1025435/pg1
This was the earlier report before the story changed. unless they treated him again with Zmapp later on after the transfusion.

^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.

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

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.

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.

53 min long NOVA Documentary, "The Plague Fighters" on Ebola Outbreak in Congo (1999)


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

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

^ true. It's just the trial.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/31/ebola-vaccine-trial/13404609/

redcap: I think a homegrown research should be embarked upon rather than wait to be spoon-fed by the Americans.
Our Medical professionals should see this as a challenge and raise their game,now is the time to earn the respect u have always craved for,enough of this mediocrity pls.

I completely agree
And I can understand why USA rejected the request. If the trial goes wrong, we will start blaming and pointing fingers at the western countries like we always do. We will accuse them of using us as human guinea pigs. They want to avoid this by complete the research and ensure the drug is fully developed.

It will take time and in that time, we also should not be sitting around but should be developing our own treatments.

It is an antibody treatment meaning that African researchers could also develop treatment using antibodies from Ebola surviors. In zmapp's case, they used antibodies from rats that were exposed to the virus.

https://www.nairaland.com/1833339/ebola-outbreak#25384847

I have deleted that part. It wasn't intended to be harsh. If it comes to my backyard, I won't be laughing either.
I think the unseriousness comes from our general tendency toward resignation. I don't see anything 'genius' about it.

Ladystewie: Nigerians are just fun loving people and the ability to find fun in a rather serious situation in a bid to reduce the tension is genius to me. I think such 'jokes' tend to calm the people down and I don't really see anything wrong with it.

I see your point here but how can a problem be solved if people do not take it seriously

There are several candidate treatments for Ebola:

Tekmira has an RNA interference drug in Phase 1 testing, but further testing was put on hold while the FDA was examining data about cytokine release, which could be deadly. (This is what happened in the disastrous TeGenero trial⁠, where six healthy volunteers became critically ill with multi-organ failure from cytokine release).

BioCryst’s BCX4430, a nucleoside type of drug which blocks viral reproduction⁠. It, like other drugs, is being co-developed by the government as bioterrorism protection.⁠ It is still in the animal testing phase.

Monoclonal antibodies—being developed by MAPP⁠ Biopharmaceutical, with the Public Health Agency of Canada and U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, works by preventing virus from entering cells. They have shown good results in macaques infected with Ebola⁠, even when administration was delayed⁠ for up to 48 hours. One huge plus for this approach is that production –in plants—can be ramped up with drug delivered within a few weeks. This ZMAPP drug was reportedly given to the two ill American missionaries, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol. Dr. Brantly also initially received a transfusion from a patient he had treated.

This older treatment—transfusion of “convalescent serum” from patients who have recovered from the same illness—seems obvious. This was used successfully to treat influenza in the 1918⁠ pandemic, polio in 1934⁠, and measles, among others. Transfusions were tried in the Kikwit Ebola outbreak in 1995⁠, with apparently good results. The problem is these patients also received better supportive care, muddying the conclusions. Dr. Thomas Geisbert, an expert on Ebola virus at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, did not see the same good outcome in studies with rhesus macaques infected with Ebola, but these were small numbers. Given the long-standing successful history, the option of convalescent serum transfusion still seems worth pursuing as a potential, relatively low-tech treatment, at least in crisis situations like we have now.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/molecules-to-medicine/2014/08/05/ebola-and-priorities-in-drug-development/

Symptoms:
A person acquires the virus through contact with the bodily fluids of someone already infected. It can take from two days to three weeks for symptoms of Ebola to appear. The disease presents itself with a fever, muscle aches and a cough before progressing to severe vomiting, diarrhea and rashes, along with kidney and liver problems. Death generally occurs as the result of either one or a combination of:dehydration, massive bleeding due to leaky blood vessels, kidney and liver failure.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-uncover-deadly/

Blood Plasma of Survivors Contain Antibodies for Treatment of Ebola Patients (convalescent serum transfusion)

In Monrovia, Liberia, 33-year old Dr. Kent Brantly of Forth Worth, Texas had been treating Ebola patients since June, as part of an international relief group called Samaritan’s Purse. But in mid-July, Brantly recognized that he himself was showing symptoms of Ebola. He isolated himself, and told the rest of the team of his suspicions; soon after, his diagnosis was confirmed.

Newsweek Magazine is Back In Print

On Thursday Brantly was given a shot at survival: a 14-year-old male Ebola patient who had been under Brantly’s care, and survived, donated a “unit of blood” to Brantly, according to Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham. “The young boy and his family wanted to be able to help the doctor that saved his life.”
The idea—novel, though not unprecedented—is that the blood (plasma, in medical parlance) of a survivor, full of antibodies proven to be strong enough to fight off the disease (i.e., immune), when transfused into an infected body, might help that body become immune itself Though it sounds a bit like something Hollywood might have cooked up, there’s some science behind it—and an historical precedent that offers hope.
.
.
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(in 1995)
The same blood transfusion procedure was repeated for seven others who were ill, the final group of Ebola-stricken patients in the hospital.
The results were staggering: seven of the eight survived.

So, why hasn’t the CDC, the WHO and the rest of the public health organizations worldwide jumped all over immune plasma infusion for Ebola? Why are we still scrambling for an Ebola treatment 20 years later?

http://www.newsweek.com/20-year-old-ebola-treatment-could-save-kent-brantly-262552
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/Supplement_1/S18.full

Ebola first emerged in Sudan and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the mid-1970s. Since then five strains have been identified: Zaire (1976), Sudan (1976), Reston (1989) Côte d’Ivoire (1994) and Bundibugyo (2007) – each named after where they were first discovered. Reston, discovered in Virginia in the US and later in pigs in the Philippines (and antibodies in a few pig farmers) isn’t known to cause hemorrhagic fever in humans. Ebola Côte d’Ivoire was discovered after a scientist contracted the infection from an autopsy on a dead chimpanzee.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antibody-treatment-found-to-halt-deadly-ebola-virus-in-primates/

Outbreaks are often traceable to a single index case where an individual has handled the carcass of a gorilla, chimpanzee, or duiker.[5] The virus then spreads person-to-person, especially within families, hospitals, and during some mortuary rituals where contact among individuals becomes more likely.[6] Before outbreaks are confirmed in areas of weak surveillance on the local or regional levels, Ebola is often mistaken for malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery, influenza, or various bacterial infections which may be endemic to the region. Learning from failed responses, such as that to the 2000 Uganda outbreak, public health measures including the WHO's Global Outbreak and Response Network were instituted in areas at high risk

See the link below for a list of recorded Ebola outbreaks since 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks

what kind of a silly conspiracy theory is this. can you even hear yourselves?

wow. he was a commissioner in Lagos back in the days wasn't he?
I wish him all the best and hope that he fulfills his duties as osun state govnr

They are very lucky. They must have had favorable genes and/or immune systems to fight off the virus.
I hope a vaccine will be developed soon.

^ It's so funny because I met a lady who said something similar. She was asking me why Nigerians are so obsessed about getting married. which is so true. She was a single mom by the way.

BananaBender: @ highlighted..........TRUTH!
....but if u get married because you're lonely and you feel pressured, you're already heading for doom. An unhappiness even worse than you felt when you were single.

If the marriage is unfulfiling then yes. but many marriages are fulfilling so....
I was looking at the relationship as fulfilling the emotional aspect while marriage fulfills the social aspect. the marriage kinda sanctions the relationship.

bukatyne: This is not about me, it is a statement of fact.
Just as you are expecting your husband to work wonders and fill all void, he is also expecting same of you.

I didn't say that husbands have to "work wonders and fill all void."
I see marriage as a partnership where both husband and wife contribute positively to each others life.

bukatyne: There is the vacuum only God can fill; only you can fill and only a spouse can fill

it's ok to celebrate your achievement when you find and marry your spouse.
If marriage is not for you, that's also ok.

BananaBender: LoL. No, I'm not.

I think my problem stems from the fact that I think getting married should be organic. That is, it is not something you are supposed to set a goal for and then work towards. It should just flow naturally. When you meet the right person, it should just makes sense that you guys go to court and sign that paper.

Or maybe I have met too many people like Onirugbon1 that I am 'unconsciously' on the defense when I hear people call marriage an accomplishment.

hmm... makes sense.
marriage itself is not an accomplishment. Anybody can get married. The sense of achievement comes from the assumption that you have found joy, partnership and companionship with the right person. A lot of people crave this hence why they set a goal to get married. There's nothing wrong with that. If you are happy being single and have no pressure, you are more likely not to set the goal and let marriage happen organically (if it happens at all). But if you detest single life and feel lonely or feel pressured by family, peers etc, you are more likely to set a goal to be married.