Zika virus knocking at Nigeria’s door –Tomori

ITRealms:

Nigerian virologist and Head, World Health Organisation Advisory Panel on Yellow Fever,Professor OyewaleTomori,has said that the discovery of a strain of Zika virus in the Cape Verde, a country near Nigeria, means it knocking on the door of the most populated nation in Africa, ITRealms reports.

Reacting to the finding of Zikavirus in Cape Verde, Prof. Tomori, who is the President of the Nigeria Academy of Science, cautioned Nigeria to see Zika virus as a serious issue nearby.

“This tells us that the Zika outbreak is not only a problem of South America, but one that is knocking on the gates of West Africa,” he said, advised that Nigeria “must resuscitate our moribund and comatose national disease surveillance system and in particular, our mosquito-borne virus disease surveillance system at the Department of Virology, University of Ibadan and the National Arbovirus Research Institute at Enugu.”

Tomori also advised that Nigeria heightens risk awareness to pregnant women and promote protection steps to avoid mosquito bites as well as sexual transmission.

He lamented that with Zika arriving at the gates of West Africa, and Yellow fever raging on in Angola and DR Congo, Nigeria may likely resort to her one and only defence against disease outbreaks “organize vigils and worship in mosques, to plead with God, who loves Nigeria so much, not to let either of the diseases enter Nigeria. We are the same Nigerians, some of whom will travel to Angola and DR Congo, with fake yellow fever vaccination cards.”

Okoli Vincent/GEE

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WHO: Zika virus may spread in coming months

ITRealms:

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has disclosed that the Zika virus could spread across Europe in coming months reports ITRealms.

WHO regional director for Europe, Dr. Zsuzsanna Jakab, noted that the assessment of the virus classified the risk of an outbreak from low to medium, underscoring that the risk should not be underestimated.

ITRealms recalls that the mosquito-borne virus first discovered in Brazil last year, 2015, has been found in more than 50 countries. Though it is highest on the island of Madeira and the Black Sea coast of Russia and Georgia, where the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes who are responsible for most of the infections are indigenous, the risk is still considered moderate in 18 countries where a different mosquito, Aedes albopictus breeds. This mosquito has also been shown to be a potential transmitter of the virus in Africa, Mexico and in lab experiments.

Jakab also said WHO is considering the capacity of countries in Europe to respond and most would do so efficiently and fast, stressing that the Europe-wide risk as low to moderate.

“With this risk assessment, we at WHO want to inform and target preparedness work in each European country based on its level of risk. We call particularly on countries at higher risk to strengthen their national capacities and prioritise the activities that will prevent a large Zika outbreak,” Dr. Jakab.

 Further, WHO urged countries with a high or moderate risk to take stronger measures to stop the spread of mosquitoes and reduce their numbers.While health professionals should be trained and equipped to detect Zika infection and report it within 24 hours. Even as pregnant women should be enabled to protect themselves from infection, including through sexual transmission.

Okoli Vincent/GEE

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Breaking News: Zika virus fear: ICANN relocates 57th meeting to India

ITRealms:

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has moved the 57 public meeting from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Hyderabad in India, due to fear of Zika virus, reports ITRealms.

President of ICANN's Global Domains Division, Mr. Akram Atallah made this disclosure in his blog post, Tuesday, saying that it was a very difficult decision to be taken by the Internet coordinating body, noting that earlier in the year, ICANN announced that ICANN56 was going to be relocated from Panama City, Panama, to Helsinki, Finland, due to concerns related to the Zika virus.

He also said that following a great deal of internal debate and discussion, as well as taking into consideration the continued spread of Zika, ICANN has decided that they will be relocating ICANN57 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Hyderabad, India.

“Due to highly limited space availabilities, this relocation has necessitated changing the date of the meeting from 29 October – 4 November 2016, to 3 – 9 November 2016,” he said.

As said by Atallah, they did not arrive at this decision easily, but rather than remain in Puerto Rico,  which he described as the excellent location they had originally chosen.

“Moving the meeting venue creates a lot of additional work and challenges, and we understand and recognize that moving an ICANN meeting affects many groups within the community. However, we have come to the conclusion that we must postpone going to Puerto Rico after a lengthy discussion with and feedback from Supporting Organisations (SO) and Advisory Committee (AC) leaders, the Board, and within our management team,” he said.

Also Atallah explained that this decision was based on available research and information and the fact that Puerto Rico has declared a state of emergency due to the ongoing Zika virus outbreak.

“We believe that the Zika virus poses a significant enough threat that we need to postpone going to Puerto Rico for the health and safety of our community and our ICANN team, just as we had to postpone ICANN52 and relocate from Marrakech to Singapore due to the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014,” he said.

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Breaking News: University of Manchester to develop vaccine for Zika virus

Breaking News@ITRealms: 

A team of experts from the University of Manchester have been commissioned to develop a new vaccine against the Zika virus as part of an initiative to counter the disease which has spread rapidly across the Americas in the last few months, reports ITRealms.

The team, ITRealms gathered would create and test a vaccine based on a safe derivative of a pre-existing smallpox vaccine – the only disease to have been successfully globally eradicated.

Dr. Tom Blanchard, Honorary Senior Lecturer at The University of Manchester and Fellow of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Consultant in Infectious Diseases at North Manchester General Hospital and the Royal Liverpool Hospital will lead the project. 

Professor Pam Vallely and Dr Eddie McKenzie are University of Manchester experts involved in the project and the work will be done in collaboration with Professors Miles Carrol and Roger Hewson from Public Health England.

“As we have seen in the case of Ebola there is now a real need to react quickly to fast spreading tropical diseases.  Zika can cause serious illness, but it often has no visible symptoms, so a vaccine for those at risk is one of the most effective ways we have of combating it,” Dr. Blanchard said.

ITRealms recollects, Zika virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947 and the disease is mainly spread by mosquitoes, though there have been reports of human to human transmission.  It is particularly serious for pregnant women, as it's been linked to birth defects – in particular, microcephaly, a condition where a baby’s brain doesn’t grow properly and it is born with an abnormally small head and serious development problems.

A recent and particularly severe outbreak which began in South America and has since spread north to United States Territories prompted the Medical Research Council, The Wellcome Trust and the Newton Fund to launch a £4m rapid response funding initiative at the beginning of February. 

Media Relations Manager at the University, Mr. James Brown, informed ITRealms that the results of this call for proposals were announced Monday and Dr Blanchard and his team were awarded £177,713 to build and test a vaccine as part of this.

It is expected that the results will be delivered within 18 months and although the first target will be the Zika virus, the nature of the vaccine candidate may enable it to combat many infectious diseases simultaneously.

Dr Blanchard added: “We know that there’s an urgent need for this vaccine but we’ll be working carefully to deliver a product which is safe and effective and which can be quickly deployed to those who need it.

“If we can also use this vaccine on multiple targets then this will represent an exciting step forward in dealing with these kinds of outbreaks.”

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) 

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