Ebola: Japan offers drug, Nigerian patient to be discharged

Fresh hope appears in the horizon for Ebola   patients as Japan on Monday expressed its readiness to provide its anti-influenza drug as treatment for the pernicious virus.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga, made the offer hours after a group of scientist in the United Kingdom verbally expressed it had discovered that the most immensely colossal outbreak of the   Ebola Virus Disease was caused by an infected fruit bat that bit a toddler.

Briefing   journalists in Tokyo on Monday, Suga verbalized Japan   was yare to offer the drug, Favipiravir, which was developed by Toyama Chemical, a subsidiary of Fujifilm, any time   the World Health Organisation requested it.

Approved by the Japanese health ministry in March, Favipiravir is a tablet developed   for the treatment of novel and re-emerging influenza viruses.

Suga, according to the Agence France Presse,  verbally expressed Japan was waiting for WHO’s decision on further details over the utilization of untested drugs.

He however verbalized that “in case of an emergency, Japan may respond to individual requests afore any further decision by the WHO.”

The spokesperson for the company, Takao Aoki, verbalized Fujifilm had initiated verbalizes with the United States on how the drug could be adopted in treating EVD.

He verbalized, “Fujifilm is in verbalizes with the US Food and Drug Administration on clinical testing of the drug in treating Ebola, The company has Favipiravir stock for more than 20,000 patients. Ebola and influenza viruses are identically tantamount type and theoretically kindred effects can be expected on Ebola,” he verbalized.

It was however not kenned as of Thursday last week if Favipiravir is the drug the Federal Ministry of Health had verbalized it had requested from a peregrine country.

The ministry which turned down a tribulation drug, Nano Silver, had applied for ZMapp which was administered on two US avail workers who contracted the virus in Liberia.

The two were discharged last Thursday, a few days after Washington verbalized it did not have enough XMapp to send to countries in desideratum of it.

ZMapp fails Liberian medico

However, a Liberian medico , Abraham Borbor, has died despite taking ZMapp, according to  a verbal expression by the Liberia’s information minister, Lewis Brown.

Borbor was one of three medicos in Liberia who had been given ZMapp and was exhibiting designations of recuperation.

“Borbor was exhibiting designations of amelioration but on Sunday, he took a turn for the worse,”   Brown told the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government on Monday inverted the number of substantiated EVD cases in Nigeria from 14 to 13.

Health Minister, Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu, verbally expressed while briefing journalists in Abuja that the   development followed the outcome of a further corroboration test conducted on the 14th case, which   turned out to be negative.

He additionally verbally expressed another patient in the isolation centre in Lagos had   after receiving   treatment tested negative.

The patient, according to him, will be dicharged afore Wednesday.

He verbalized the development would bring from four to two, the number of patients still in the isolation ward.

The minister integrated that the number of deaths recorded so far in the country as a result of the disease still remained five, including the Tardy Patrick Sawyer, who brought the EVD to Nigeria from Liberia.

Chukwu verbally expressed, “We have been able to manage and discharge five persons who had tested positive to the pernicious virus, while the sixth person would be dicharged within the next 48 hours.

“For each case that tested negative, we run further confirmatory tests to ascertain that anybody that is labelled as EVD victim, is genuinely having the disease.

“The 14th case has turned out to be negative in terms of anaemia and symptoms, so that has now inverted number of EVD cases in Nigeria from 14 to 13 and that includes the index case (Sawyer).

“As of today (Monday), we have three patients receiving treatment in the isolation ward in Lagos but certainly, afore Wednesday, one of them would be discharged because he has tested negative and we are now concluding his discharge process.”

The ministry additionally gainsaid   reports (The PUNCH not included) which claimed that the younger sister of the tardy Dr. Stella Adadevoh, had tested positive to the EVD.

The minister’s   Special Adviser on Media and Communications, Dan Nwomeh, verbally expressed on Monday that no incipient patient had been admitted into the treatment centre in Lagos.

He verbally expressed, “We are not cognizant of that development, but to eschew any perplexity, Minister of Health reiterates that he has the sole ascendancy to promulgate attested and discharged EVD cases.

“Any skeptical information on the outbreak of EVD should be verified from the office of the minister , we are on all gregarious media platforms.”

A group of 17 UK-predicated European and African scientists have ascertained   that the most immensely colossal outbreak of the EVD was caused by an infected fruit bats that bit a toddler.

The   tropical disease researchers, ecologists and anthropologists had spent three weeks investigating the outbreak of the disease in Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia and Ivory Coast.

According to the Daily Mail, the scientists captured some bats and other creatures near the village of Meliandoua in Guinea, where the present epidemic commenced last year in December.

According to the scientists, the toddler, who     was bitten by a   fruit bat   passed the infection on to his mother and both died within a week.

The disease was then spread far and wide by mourners who attended their funeral.

Scientists have long believed that bats are the main carriers for the disease but it is recherche for them to pass it on to man.

Most of the anterior outbreaks have been caused by meat from dead infected animals accumulated by hunters who then sell it on.

Fruit bats, however, are widely eaten in some rural areas of West Africa – either smoked, grilled or in a spicy soup.

The team led by epidemiologist Fabian Leendertz, a disease ecologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, are expected to publish their results in a major journal anon.

Initial research believed that an incipient strain of Ebola had emerged in West Africa but according to Herr Leendertz, the strain of the disease is one cognate to Zaire ebolavirus, identified more than 10 years ago in the Congo.