Combating Ebola virus in West Africa
The dreaded Ebola disease currently raging in some parts of West Africa has claimed some 500 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since it broke out in May. Despite efforts to contain it by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other international health bodies, the fact that Ghana is reportedly treating its first known victim indicates that it is still spreading. Ebola has long been known to exist in parts of Central Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Central Africa Republic (CAR) and Uganda, where health experts have explained its incidence and spread to people eating monkey meat. Similarly, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, particularly in Guinea has been put down to the consumption of bats, a local delicacy in that country. Thus, as an initial measure to contain it, the Guinean authorities have banned bat consumption.
According to health experts, the symptoms of the disease are internal and external bleeding, vomiting and diarrhoea with a high fatality rate of 90 per cent for those affected. It has as yet no known cure, as such all that can be done is to contain and limit its spread. No doubt, the outbreak of the disease is bound to further stretch the normally inadequate health capabilities of the countries in the sub-region which have found managing the routine health issues hard going, at best. For instance, currently health workers in Nigeria are on strike as a means of extracting improved remunerations and other concessions from the government, and in the process paralysing healthcare delivery in most parts of the country. Disputes between governments and doctors are a regular occurrence in most countries in the sub-region.
It is therefore of utmost necessity that where such disputes are subsisting, as obtained in Nigeria, they should be expeditiously resolved in order to address the urgent issue of containing the Ebola disease from growing beyond its incipient state to become a raging epidemic that could decimate the population of the sub-region. It needs not be stressed that to effectively do this would entail the efficient functioning of the full complement of the healthcare delivery structure of all the countries.
The realisation of the danger posed by Ebola outbreak necessitated the convening earlier this month of a summit of heads of state in the subregion to deliberate on strategies to contain the spread. As a response for a disease that was identified in May, the summit was belated. Perhaps if it had been held sooner, measures could have been put in place to halt its spread from Guinea, its initial country of issue, through health and other measures capable of limiting its spread. In other words, leaders in the sub-region should fashion out a way of responding to critical issues such as the current one. For the summit to have the desired impact, its outcome should be implemented with the urgency desired.
An action that readily commends itself in combating Ebola outbreak is the sensitisation of people on how to recognise the symptoms of the disease and what immediate actions to take, which certainly would include notifying the appropriate authorities for their prompt action. Initially, the number of those affected by the disease grew exponentially because out of the filial responsibility people came in contact with fluids from the bodies of the affected relatives. Therefore any sensitisation programme should underscore the perils involved in coming in contact with those suffering from the disease, no matter how close they are to one. In the same vein, to contain the spread of the disease, individual countries should establish quarantine centres where those that have contracted the disease would be sent for treatment.
Now that Ebola has manifested itself in West Africa and started taking lives, it should be ascribed the priority it demands among other diseases to which cures are being sought. This implies that special emphasis should be given to scientific researches into cures for diseases, such as this one, before they become so virulent as to decimate our population; and the first step in doing this is to accord the health sector the importance it deserves in budgetary allocations across the entire sub-region.