Re: Ebola: Discussion
Re: Ebola: Discussion
30 June 2014, 17:00
Ebola: Is the virus attracting the wrong kind of attention?
The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has been described as ?out of control? by Medecins sans Frontieres. VoR?s Tim Ecott hosts a discussion with four expert guests on a virus which is thought to have killed more than 400 people this year.
Joining Tim in our London studio were:
Dr. Mahlet Zimeta, lecturer in Philosophy at University of Roehampton, honorary research associate at Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL
Sulayman Jeng, assistant editor of Kibaaro News (Gambia)
Dr Ben Neuman,virologist from the University of Reading's School of Biological Sciences
and by Skype from Liberia:
Agnes Umunna, journalist and founder of human resources development project Straight from the Heart
Soundbites:
BN: "On a case by case basis, Ebola is one of the most deadly pathogens that we know about. In the current cases it affects and actually kills somewhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of the people who are infected. However, the good side is that the virus doesn?t spread very well. When it does spread it actually makes your body essentially attack itself: the white blood cells that would normally be cleaning up the virus infection are provoked into releasing a lot of harmful chemicals that degrade the inner lining of your blood vessels, and this is what eventually causes death due to organ failure.
"In a hospital, as I understand it, the treatment is generally bed rest, you try to keep the patient well-hydrated and comfortable for the duration of the virus, which sometimes can last as much as a month.
"In the laboratories people have found some drugs that seem at least in cell culture to be effective against the virus, but, as far as I?m aware, these haven?t been used in a clinical setting and we don?t know if the damage they will do to the people will be preferable to the disease."
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BN: "What happens is that as the disease progresses the person starts to feel worse and worse, and it?s about the time when person starts feeling really bad they are most likely to be able to transmit the disease. These people wouldn?t want to move, from what I understand, you just want to lie down and be still during this time. So it may be that people are incapacitated enough that they don?t spread it, but there is certainly no physical barrier to spreading the virus overseas by air travel."
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BN: "Africa is where the disease always comes back, and about every 2 years it seems to rear its ugly head again, so people in Africa have a vested interest. These are the people who are going to be infected, and these are the people who I would think, would most want to do research. Yes, it?s really a shame that there are no more category 4 high containment laboratories there to enable them to do this.
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BN: ...this is a very controllable and very potentially curable problem. You?ve got a virus that is always going to be in a band, it runs right through the middle of Africa, it?s going to keep coming back, but each time it comes into people, it burns itself out in a few months, the studies have shown that you only need to control a little bit of the virus, if we knock back 90 percent of the virus with a drug or something, and the person can potentially survive."
"Lots of small labs around the world are already putting their money and time into coming up with possible solutions, and there?s a wide range of these, things from antibodies, little proteins, lots of different drugs that seem to be at least promising, it?s just at the next step, getting it to something that we know is safe to use and effective in the clinic. This is very, very expensive. And, frankly, I?m not sure whether individual countries can afford this or would have a reasonable vested interest in putting in that kind of money. And I think it?s a much easier problem to solve than HIV which, once you have it, is yours forever, cancer, which is basically a mutation of you, it's almost too much life, or even something like tuberculosis, which hides inside our cells, and is very difficult to root out. Yes, Ebola can be fixed.
MZ: "I thought what Dr. Neuman said was very interesting, and it was new to me. He said that it may not be affordable to individual countries, and if that?s right it means the Ebola virus recurs, and recurs in Africa. And what would be a shame is if each time we got this kind of hysterical media frenzy, this fancy of Africa, the Dark Continent from which death is going to come.
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SJ: "It is a two-way: the West is tied to Africa, and Africa always relies on the West to resolve their problems for them, personally I think Africans should step up and try to resolve their problems without relying much on external forces or agents like the western world.
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BN: "I suppose that?s the problem, I may not care where a particular virus comes from, I?m interested in a virus, but my funding body probably does. If it?s a UK-funding body, they only want to fund things affect the UK interests.
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"There?s this thing called the Nagoya Protocol, to follow Dr. Neuman?s point about funding for certain kinds of research, the Nagoya Protocol was set to protect biodiversity and insure that the benefits of this kind of research were shared internationally and equally, the idea would be that would motivate the indigenous peoples in rural areas to cooperate with big pharmaceuticals or governments of other countries or international organisations. The actual agreement of the protocol has been widely spread in the so-called developing world, and very minimally taken up in the developed world, they are not interested in equal sharing of resources or mutual benefits. A county in South East Asia (I believe it was Indonesia) refused to handle over samples of the most recent version of bird flu to the WHO, because it was trying to sign an agreement with a drug company to develop a vaccine with a cure suitable to its own population. Because if they hand it over to the WHO, and then the international cure is developed, they are not going to be the first country that gets it and they won?t be able to afford it. So I think we are seeing interesting reactions from the countries in so-called developing world, and there?s a reason for this. We mustn?t forget the history of exploitation, and its current history isn?t being addressed.
BN: "The main cost is in people, as I suppose every aspect of research is.
Somewhere around $100 million to $200 million will be the low end and it can go a little higher than that. It?s the cost of getting doctors to the right place, renting hospitals, putting all that equipment there, manufacturing the drug, making a factory to manufacture the drug, yes, there?s a lot that goes into it, more than just handing a person a pill and see if it works.
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MZ: ... I think if a government spends that money on an Ebola cure, then they might be criticised for not spending it on education or on famine and malnutrition, or sexual health. So in the context of all other problems governments have to deal with ? ... what I think would be good is if the attitude towards the victims was closer to empathy and compassion rather than seeing them as a spectacle.""
(VoR)
Full text and audio:
http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/20...-attracting-the-wrong-kind-of-attention-6429/
