WHO experts on Ebola arriving this month

    424
    0
    SHARE
    ANGELES CITY – The Department of Agriculture (DA) is inclined to lift quarantine imposed early this month in Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, and Pangasinan where some piggeries were found contaminated with the Reston-Ebola virus, but would rather wait for the go signal from experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) who are arriving in the first week of January.

    In an interview, Dr. Romeo Manalili, chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry in the region, said that after a battery of tests on the pigs in the quarantined farms yielded negative results, officials are inclined to lift the quarantine.

    “Scores of tests conducted by the RITM (Regional Institute for Tropical Medicine) all indicated zero Reston Ebola contamination in the farms,” he said.

    But he said that government authorities prefer to wait for WHO experts who are to arrive in the first week of January to assess the all measures undertaken so far on the reported outbreak and find out the source of the virus.

    “WHO experts will meet with officials at the Bulacan capitol in Malolos and then with Nueva Ecija officials in their province this January,” Manalili said. He did not say when the WHO experts are to meet with Pangasinan officials.

    Manalili said he expected quarantine to be lifted once the WHO experts give the go signal for this.

    Earlier, BAI director Dr. Divinio Catbagan also said that the Paris-based Office International des Epizooties (OIE) – also known as the World Organization for Animal Health – will also conduct a “risk survey” and help determine the source of the Reston-Ebola virus found in tissues taken from pigs in the piggeries in Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija and Bulacan.

    The Department of Agriculture had also formally asked the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to send a team of experts to help in the investigation.

    Catbagan told Punto! that monkeys were ruled out as the source of the Ebola strain found in the tissue samples of pigs in the quarantined areas.

    “The Reston Ebola was initially discovered in monkeys from Laguna that reached the US where the virus was uncovered in a laboratory in Reston, Virginia,” he said.

    He said the monkeys were from a farm called Ferlite and that all them were disposed of after some were found contaminated with Reston-Ebola. Twenty five workers at the farm tested positive for the virus which, however, disappeared after two months, he recalled.

    Catbagan said that despite the discovery of Reston Ebola in crab-eating monkeys called macaques from Laguna, the Philippines never stopped exporting its monkeys for pets, especially to Germany.

    “International standards are strict on animal movements and the fact that other countries continued to take in our monkeys indicated their confidence there has been no danger from the virus,” he said.

    “We have conducted exhaustive studies in the affected piggeries and we have established no connection between monkeys and pigs,” he said.

    Catbagan recalled that immediately after the US laboratory released its findings on Reston Ebola in local pigs, government experts collected 94 more samples for examination but found no contamination in them.

    LEAVE A REPLY

    Please enter your comment!
    Please enter your name here