by Nkechi Okoronkwo

Vom (Plateau) – As the world battles the Ebola virus, the National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI) said on Tuesday that it had the capacity to safely diagnose any specimen from animal or human patient.

Executive Director of the Research Institute, Dr Mohammed Ahmed, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Vom, Plateau, on Tuesday.

Ahmed said that the institute had a well-fitted modular laboratory and reagents to do the job.

“The institute has facilities and well-trained expertise that can safely handle samples brought here and give the right diagnosis.

“We also have positive precious suit that would protect the laboratory scientists from any contact with the room to be used for the diagnosis,” he said.

He said that Ebola is a zoonotic disease with humans and chimpanzees as mere accidental hosts of the virus.

According to him, bats are key bearers of Ebola virus.

He explained that for humans to contract and spread it, there has to be an interface with monkeys and baboons.

The executive director said that the institute was currently concerned with its defined role of primary surveillance to seek out foot bats that could be carrying the virus.

“You may not hear us much in the frenzy over the spread of the diseases because it is now more of a human-to-human transmission which is more for medics.

“We handle the animal aspect of such contacts and spread.”

He said that surveillance had so far revealed that the risk of massive contacts was very low, but added that such surveillance was being sustained.

“The high risk areas might be games reserves, so we have our eyes on such areas.”

He said that though the disease had been in existence since 1976, there was still no drug or vaccine.

The latest outbreak which first hit Guinea, has so far killed more than 800 people across West Africa, including Sierra Leone, Liberia and recently Nigeria, where some medical staff contracted the virus after attending to a Liberia official infected with the disease.

The Liberian national, Mr Patrick Sawyer, who died in Lagos last month, was the first death in Africa’s most populous nation.

The Federal Government confirmed the doctor who treated Sawyer, and seven other staff of the hospital were infected after results of tests on Monday.

This latest development leaves many Nigerians anxious about how to contain the spread of the deadly virus.