The national coordinator of the Nigerian Poliovirus Containment Exercise, Prof Olatunji Kolawole has said that an outbreak of ebola virus disease (EVD) was imminent in the country as revealed in the results of medical checks conducted recently in Ilorin, Kwara State.
Delivering a lecture on ‘Transcending the viral world: A tale of mimicry, knockdown and knockout’ at the 190th Inaugural Lectures of the University of Ilorin yesterday, Kolawole said the checks showed that traces of an outbreak of the viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) fever was possible.
It would be recalled that on July 20, 2014, a Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, who was infected with the ebola virus, arrived in Lagos and set off a chain of transmission that resulted in the infection of 19 people and the death of seven.
“Education policy makers should realise that the threat of VHF is real, difficult to curtail and fatal. The fact that we found a sero-prevalence of Marburg Virus in another study population in Ilorin shows that another VHF outbreak is imminent.
“If it happens again, it might not be transmitted from a Liberian or any foreigner anymore; it might originate within our shores,” said the professor.
He ured urged major stakeholders in the health sector to take urgent and proactive measures to prevent further outbreaks of the disease in the country.
He also canvassed more support for biomedical researches in Nigeria and warned of the likely outbreak of another deadly virus similar to ebola.
“The plethora of potential outbreaks that could affect Nigeria with dire consequences is enormous. Similar to ebola virus in terms of fatality is the Marburg virus. A virus considered to be extremely dangerous.
Marburg virus serological prevalence was last reported in a Nigerian population in 1988 by my mentor and a distinguished elder in the viral world, Prof Oyewole Tomori, who found 29 human Sera positive for Marburg in the northern savanna zones of Benue and the then Gongola states.’’
It would be recalled that Kolawole, was the first virologist to contribute 19 novel bacterial strains from the University of Ilorin to the World Genomic Bank (NCBI) U.S.A.
