By Kemo Cham
[First published on www.politicosl.com] The failure of medical authorities
to test for the Ebola virus on the latest Magburaka case may be due to mutation
of the virus, a health official has said.
The victim, Marima Jalloh, whose
death last week occasioned a setback for the fight against the West African
Ebola epidemic, did not present any sign or symptoms associated with the
hemorrhagic fever disease when she reported for treatment, said Dr Brima
Kargbo, Chief Medical Officer.
“There was no fever when she went to
hospital and we all know the cardinal symptom of Ebola is fever,” Dr Kargbo
said Saturday at an emergency press conference. He told journalists at the
Emergency Operations Center (EOC) that joint teams of Sierra Leonean, WHO and
other aid agency officials had been dispatched to four districts where the
victim traveled to when she fell ill.
Part of their investigation mandate is to
ascertain the source and route of the infection.
Mutation is the changes in the DNA
sequence of a gene. This allows the organism like virus, to change form or
behaviour.
This may explain the rare appearance
of the Magburaka victim who presented none of the known Ebola symptoms, said Dr
Kargbo, noting that the 22-year old lady was not even vomiting when she
reported at the hospital.
The CMO said genetic sequencing may
also be carried out to shed light on this mystery.
Such an investigation will be
crucial to restore confidence in the EOC, jointly operated by the Ministry of
Health and Sanitation (MoHS) and the Office of National Security (ONS) who have
assumed the role of the defunct National Ebola Response Centre (NERC).
The lack of confidence in the health
system has already resulted in the reported attack on two quarantine homes and
properties of a Paramount Chief in Magburaka by angry youths seeking answers to
the lapses on the part of the hospital authorities.
According to reports, when Mariama
reported at the outpatient department of the Magburaka Government Hospital, she
was treated for mild infections and discharged. She went home only for her
condition to deteriorate, leading to her death few days later. The family
apparently had no reason to suspect Ebola and so they washed her body the
traditional way.
Health authorities said 109 contacts
were being quarantined as a result, among them 28 categorised as high risk.As
of Saturday January 16, three contacts were also said to be missing.
Meanwhile, the CMO said
investigations so far found that the viral strain was the same as the one in
the first phase of the epidemic – Zaire Virus – which meant that the latest
transmission was linked to the very epidemic the country was declared free from
on November 7.
The million-dollar question now is:
how did the victim get in contact with the virus? Medical experts had said that
the Ebola virus, as it is known today, could only remain alive either in a
living host or in a controlled laboratory environment.
The incubation period for the virus
– that is the time it takes for it to manifest itself outwardly in a host – is
21 days. If it is not in a living cell it dies within that period.
The idea behind the WHO recommended
42-day countdown to declare a country free of the virus was to ensure that if
it existed anywhere outside a host it would have been dead by that time.
The EOC, according to the CMO, was
working on four theories: – Firstly, the possibility that the victim might have
contracted the virus in one of the places she’d traveled through within the
last few days of her life, including Lunsar in Port Loko District, and Bamoi
Luma in Kambia District.
Secondly, she might have also
contracted it via bush meat consumption – zoonostic transmission, known to be
very rare or a third scenario would be through contact with a survivor.
“It may also be a missing chain of
transmission,” the CMO said, while cautioning against making hasty conclusion
outside scientific realm.
“Right now we leave it very open. We
are trying to narrow it down,” he said.
(C) Politico 19/01/16
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