By Godwin Tyonongu
Abuja
A member of the Advisory Committee on the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), Professor Maurice Iwu, has warned those condemning the use of kola nuts as an experimental medicine against the deadly Ebola disease to shut up their mouths.
Iwu, a professor of pharmacology, said a laboratory experiment was carried out by a research team, including him around 1999, five years after the virus was discovered in Congo and it discovered that kola contained an immune booster and anti-viral agent.
He said: “For us in sciences, we work with evidence, so if you can’t prove otherwise, keep your mouth shut. We announced the kola compound that time because no animal was able to withstand the virus but kola was able to arrest it.”
Iwu, who was reacting to questions from newsmen yesterday on the EVD, said “Americans will be stupid” to give us the products they used for trials on their patients since the treatment have its peculiar differences.
His reaction came barely a few hours after the Ministry of Health gave a clean bill of health to four persons earlier quarantined over the EVD.
He expressed doubt that currently, it would be impossible to have what he termed the Phase 3 trial of the virus given the fact that it was not easy to have enough patients for such.
He, however, expressed optimism that not all patients would die of the virus, he stressed, a few people had survived it, citing the example a province in Congo, where the virus originated.
“If the patient’s immune system is strong, he can withstand the virus for some time. All I know is that we are not helpless on this disease. We have scientists who are working.TRG is working and we are receiving praises. If it were America now the 4 persons confirmed negative of the disease, the whole world will hear it.
“They will be telling people to come and learn from them on how to treat Ebola cases. The breakthrough in Lagos is unusual. The situation could have been horrible for it to happen in such a highly populated state. But the medical practitioners in the hospital there made their quarantine method to work.
“The Western medicine is not as good as ours but they are making us to toe their line. Kola is one of the products we are looking at, at the TRG.”
Iwu hinted on the possibility of the Ebola virus been weaponised in the next 10 years, noting that had the country equipped its military doctors as done in other climes they should have been the one to be treating the Ebola cases .
He said the EVD had been regarded as a category A weapon.
“That’s why the military is interested because it can be weaponise,the frontier science has said so.”
