“We can confirm that [fact] without qualification because we
have active contact with her,” he said in an update on her this evening,
adding that his group was in touch with her at the quarantine location
in Lagos only minutes before typing his update.
John Okiyi Kalu, one of the men
behind the #GiveThemExperimentalDrugs twitter hashtag, has refuted
insinuations that Obi Justina Ejelonu is the nurse reported on Wednesday
to have escaped from Ebola quarantine in Lagos. “Nurse Justina is holding out well and has shown improvements because of your prayers and support. She is aware that majority of Nigerians are praying for her and others to make it. And we are believing God that she will make it.”
The World Health Organization has approved the use of the experimental drug, ZMapp, which has proved helpful in two American patients, for use in West Africa.
It is however unclear how soon it will be available. On Monday, manufacturer Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., based in San Diego, said it had no supplies left after it made its doses available to an un-named West African nation, thought to be Liberia. The company had not planned to begin human testing until next year.
Full text of the statement by Mr. Kalu:
UPDATE ON NURSE JUSTINA
The nurse who reportedly escaped from quarantine is not Obi Justina Ejelonu.
We can confirm that without qualification because we have active contact with her. As recent as 20mins before typing this note we were in contact with her at the quarantine location in Lagos.
Ignore the malicious rumor that she is the one being referred to in this report: http://thenationonlineng.net/new/ebola-nigerian-nurse-skips-quarantine-centre/
Nurse Justina is holding out well and has shown improvements because of your prayers and support. She is aware that majority of Nigerians are praying for her and others to make it. And we are believing God that she will make it.
On the substantive report from The Nation Newspaper, as also published by Sahara Reporters, that is exactly the type of doomsday scenario we painted and warned about earlier. If Justina and others in quarantine don't survive, most Nigerians will avoid quarantine and resort to prayer houses and juju priests. Again, if quarantine locations are not made better with modern facilities, many more will "skip" and join the general population. That can only spell DISASTER of monumental proportion.
The authorities must deliver the experimental drugs to those in quarantine, give them oxygen, essential drugs for the associated symptoms and make the location more habitable with power, water and other essentials. Quarantine locations should not approximate to "awaiting death" facilities otherwise Nigeria will pay dearly. People need to go in and come out alive to convince others to follow that logical and sane path.
Once more, we wish to state that Justina Obi Ejelonu is currently at the quarantine facility waiting for the experimental drugs that WHO has approved, Canada donated and Nigerian government accepted to deploy. She needs those drugs TODAY and if she doesn't get them, alongside her other colleagues in quarantine, it simply means Nigerian state have failed them.
Society normally pays for such failures.
Those managing the Nigerian state will be held responsible at all levels of government if those in quarantine continue to die because we have not provided adequate life saving care for them in a decent and expeditious manner. Since they were taken in early in the infection cycle, they are expected to make it out alive with good management. Even without experimental drugs.
#GiveThemExperimentalDrugs NOW.
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