First case of ebola reported in Africa's most populous city Lagos

[Poitier]

Nigeria Successfully Contains Ebola, Two More Patients Discharged, One Left
Aug 26, 2014

Nigeria has successfully reduced the number of Ebola cases in the country to one, the Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, has said.

The minister in a press conference on Tuesday said since the confirmation of the outbreak of the deadly disease in July, the country has been able to manage the disease to only one, down from the 13 cases the country confirmed few days ago.

The statement by the minister reads:

Press Briefing By The Minister Of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu; Update On The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) In Nigeria As Of Tuesday August, 26th, 2014

Today is the 38th day since the Ebola Virus Disease was imported into Nigeria by a Liberian-American.

As of today, 26th August, 2014, Nigeria has had thirteen (13) cases of EVD including the index case.

Of these thirteen (13), five (5), including the index case unfortunately did not survive the disease and are now late.

However, seven (7) of the infected persons were successfully managed at the Isolation ward in Lagos and have been discharged home.

Two (2) of treated patients, a male doctor and a female nurse were discharged yesterday evening, 25th August, 2014, having satisfied the criteria for discharge.

As I speak to you, Nigeria has only one confirmed case of EVD, a secondary contact of Mr. Patrick Sawyer’s and spouse of one of the physicians who participated in the management of the index case. She is stable but still on treatment at the Isolation ward in Lagos.

So far, all the reported cases of the EVD in Nigeria have their root in the index case, the late Mr. Patrick Sawyer. This is an indication that, thus far, Nigeria has contained the disease outbreak.

I wish to reassure Nigerians and indeed the global community that the Government shall remain vigilant and will not relent as Government continues to work with her partners to ensure that the disease is kept out of the country.

Thank you.



Dan Nwomeh

Special Assistant on Media and Communication to the Minister

Federal Ministry of Health

1st Floor, Federal Secretariat Complex, Phase III

Ahmadu Bello Way, Abuja

08033236501, 07054658028


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[newworldafro]

Nigeria Successfully Contains Ebola, Two More Patients Discharged, One Left
Aug 26, 2014

Nigeria has successfully reduced the number of Ebola cases in the country to one, the Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, has said.

The minister in a press conference on Tuesday said since the confirmation of the outbreak of the deadly disease in July, the country has been able to manage the disease to only one, down from the 13 cases the country confirmed few days ago.

The statement by the minister reads:

Press Briefing By The Minister Of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu; Update On The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) In Nigeria As Of Tuesday August, 26th, 2014

Today is the 38th day since the Ebola Virus Disease was imported into Nigeria by a Liberian-American.

As of today, 26th August, 2014, Nigeria has had thirteen (13) cases of EVD including the index case.

Of these thirteen (13), five (5), including the index case unfortunately did not survive the disease and are now late.

However, seven (7) of the infected persons were successfully managed at the Isolation ward in Lagos and have been discharged home.

Two (2) of treated patients, a male doctor and a female nurse were discharged yesterday evening, 25th August, 2014, having satisfied the criteria for discharge.

As I speak to you, Nigeria has only one confirmed case of EVD, a secondary contact of Mr. Patrick Sawyer’s and spouse of one of the physicians who participated in the management of the index case. She is stable but still on treatment at the Isolation ward in Lagos.

So far, all the reported cases of the EVD in Nigeria have their root in the index case, the late Mr. Patrick Sawyer. This is an indication that, thus far, Nigeria has contained the disease outbreak.

I wish to reassure Nigerians and indeed the global community that the Government shall remain vigilant and will not relent as Government continues to work with her partners to ensure that the disease is kept out of the country.

Thank you.



Dan Nwomeh

Special Assistant on Media and Communication to the Minister

Federal Ministry of Health

1st Floor, Federal Secretariat Complex, Phase III

Ahmadu Bello Way, Abuja

08033236501, 07054658028


Stay updated with Abusidiqu.com, in partnership with NIGERIANEWSBEAT. Follow us on TWITTER or be our fan on FACEBOOK

Do not hesitate to leave your opinion in the comment section below.

To contact Abusidiqu.com for Article Submission and Advertisement or General inquiry, send a mail toinfo@abusidiqu.com





http://abusidiqu.com/nigeria-succes...ntains-ebola-two-patients-discharged-one-left

So was the medical protocol they took to get the cases down from 13 to 1??...if this this true ... ...... Does this mean they found the cure???

 

[Poitier]

Nigeria Draws on Polio Mistakes to Contain Ebola Outbreak
By Yinka Ibukun and Chris Kay Aug 25, 2014 8:46 AM ET

A day after the death of Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who brought Ebola to Lagos, Nigeria’s government took over the empty floor of a building off a busy highway in Africa’s largest city.

Drawing on the country’s battle to eradicate polio, which is endemic in the West African nation, a command center was set up in the densely packed Yaba district to coordinate efforts between state, federal and international health officials. The mission: Contain Ebola’s spread after Sawyer died in the coastal city of more than 20 million people.

With the resources of Africa’s largest economy and the benefit of tracking down the first case soon after it arrived, Nigeria has managed to limit the number of deaths from the virus to five. The worst-ever outbreak has killed at least 1,350 people with Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone struggling to put a lid on the disease.

“What was pretty incredible was that the government, based on its polio experience, formed an emergency operation center that could identify each of those assets and put them to use for the response,” John Vertefeuille, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who advises the Nigerian government, said. “It allows the government to direct the key strategies that will be used to improve the response and it also set up a standard for accountability.”

Airport Screening
The CDC, which set up camp in the two-story building, has eight people in Nigeria, and is working with the government to screen people at borders and airports, and to trace people exposed to the illness and keep health workers safe. They are part of a group of about 40 experts who meet twice daily to assess outbreak response based on field reports by more than 300 volunteers, Faisal Shuaib, the emergency operating center’s incident manager said by phone from Lagos today.

Sawyer was visibly sick when he landed at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, the nation’s commercial hub, on July 20. Nigerian government doctors had been on strike for about two weeks when he landed.

That may have proved fortunate for Nigerian authorities trying to limit the spread of the disease. Sawyer was taken to a private hospital in the city’s Obalende district, which has better hygiene and control standards than a public facility, Oyewale Tomori, president of the Nigerian Academy of Science and a former World Health Organization official, said by phone from Abuja, the capital. Sawyer died on July 25.

Tracking Patients
All the confirmed cases in Nigeria had contact with people Sawyer infected or Sawyer himself. Five patients have been discharged after recovering and four are being treated in Lagos, Health MinisterOnyebuchi Chukwu told reporters in Abuja on Aug. 22. The government is monitoring 213 people.

“The battle is not over, the country has done well in containing it,” Chukwu said. “If by another two weeks we don’t get any more cases from secondary contacts we will be happy.”

South Africa last week blocked citizens of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia from entering Africa’s second-largest economy. The ban didn’t include Nigeria because the risk is low given the relative containment of the disease, the Department of Health said in an e-mailed statement last week.

The Democratic Republic of Congo said yesterday as many as 13 people have died of Ebola in a separate outbreak from the one in the West African nations.

Attacking Polio
Nigeria missed opportunities to eradicate polio in the past decade because some people refused to be vaccinated in the mainly Muslim north, where preachers said the campaign was a U.S. ploy to sterilize followers. The Islamist-militant group Boko Haram, which means “western education is a sin,” makes vaccination difficult in the northeast, where it operates.

Donors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are spending $1 billion annually to eliminate polio in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Health officials have enlisted top Muslim leaders to promote the campaign and are working more closely with health agencies, non-governmental organizations and others to target areas where there are coverage gaps.

The efforts seem to be paying off in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with about 170 million people. There have been five confirmed cases of polio this year, down from 53 cases in 2013, according to WHO. The emergency centers used for polio could serve as “engine rooms” to tackle Ebola and other epidemic diseases such as cholera, measles and meningitis, according to Shuaib.

‘Better Response’
In Lagos, people go about daily life amid state government, private industry and media education campaigns about Ebola.

Lagos state Governor Babatunde Fashola has asked residents to avoid urinating and defecating in public places, while reassuring Nigerians that the state and federal government has enough resources to control the spread of the disease.

“We should perhaps never have been in this situation, but we are now in it,” Fashola said last week. “Our response is a lot better than when the news first broke; and our capacity is increasing daily.”

Workers at supermarkets, highway tolls and compounds in the city have taken to wearing plastic gloves. At music venues such as the New Afrika Shrine run by the family of the late Afrobeat creator Fela Kuti, hands are sprayed with sanitizer before patrons can enter to enjoy bottles of palm wine in the warehouse-shaped club heavy with marijuana smoke.

“What is important is vigilance and surveillance,” said Health Minister Chukwu. “It is not a death sentence.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Yinka Ibukun in Lagos at yibukun@bloomberg.net; Chris Kay in Lagos at ckay5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.netPaul Richardson, John Bowker, Dulue Mbachu

 

[Poitier]

Ebola drug '100% effective' in monkey trials

Scientists say ZMapp "offers the best option" for treating deadly virus, which is raging in five West African nations.

Last updated: 29 Aug 2014 18:51

Ebola has killed more than 1,500 people in four West African nations and is still spreading [Al Jazeera]
The experimental Ebola drug ZMapp cured all 18 of the lab monkeys infected with the deadly virus, including those suffering the fever and haemorrhaging characteristic of the disease and just hours from death, scientists have said.

Even monkeys not treated until five days after infection survived, the scientists, who published their data in the journal Nature on Friday, said.

No other experimental Ebola therapy has ever shown success in primates when given that long after infection; the five days is analogous to nine to 11 days after infection in people.

Although two American aid workers who contracted Ebola in the West Afrucan nation of Liberia were cured after receiving ZMapp, their physicians do not know if the drug helped.

A Liberian doctor with the disease died this week despite being given the drug, as did a Spanish priest.

ZMapp, produced by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, has never been scientifically tested in people, and the current study was the first in primates.

The success is therefore a "monumental achievement," virologist Thomas Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch wrote in a commentary on the paper, published online in Nature.

There are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments, but human safety trials will begin next week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and this autumn on one from NewLink Genetics Corp.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed 1,552 people out of 3,069 confirmed cases, the World Health Organisation said.

The agency said the disease was on pace to infect 20,000 people. Neither governments nor private medical groups have been able to contain the outbreak, which WHO said will almost certainly continue into 2015.

Optimal mix

ZMapp is a mix of three antibodies that bind to proteins on Ebola viruses and trigger the immune system to destroy them.

ZMapp had previously developed two different cocktails of antibodies, but they protected only 43 percent of monkeys when given as late as five days after infection.

For the current study, scientists led by Gary Kobinger of the Public Health Agency of Canada set out to identify the optimal mix of antibodies from the earlier cocktails.

His team tested the antibodies in guinea pigs one at a time and in various combinations, identifying the two best performers last December.

The two graduated to tests in 12 rhesus monkeys. This spring the winner of that face-off, ZMapp, was given to another 18 infected monkeys - three doses at three-day intervals starting three, four or five days after infection.

All three untreated monkeys, in contrast, died of Ebola by day eight. With ZMapp, even advanced symptoms such as rashes, liver dysfunction and haemorrhaging disappeared, a result Kobinger called "beyond my own expectations"

"This is an extremely encouraging result," said David Evans, professor of virology at England's University of Warwick, who was not involved in the study.

The success suggests that ZMapp "offers the best option" for treating Ebola, Kobinger's team wrote, and should be tested for safety in people to enable its compassionate use "as soon as possible".

 

[TMNT4000]

Ebola drug '100% effective' in monkey trials

Scientists say ZMapp "offers the best option" for treating deadly virus, which is raging in five West African nations.

Last updated: 29 Aug 2014 18:51

Ebola has killed more than 1,500 people in four West African nations and is still spreading [Al Jazeera]
The experimental Ebola drug ZMapp cured all 18 of the lab monkeys infected with the deadly virus, including those suffering the fever and haemorrhaging characteristic of the disease and just hours from death, scientists have said.

Even monkeys not treated until five days after infection survived, the scientists, who published their data in the journal Nature on Friday, said.

No other experimental Ebola therapy has ever shown success in primates when given that long after infection; the five days is analogous to nine to 11 days after infection in people.

Although two American aid workers who contracted Ebola in the West Afrucan nation of Liberia were cured after receiving ZMapp, their physicians do not know if the drug helped.

A Liberian doctor with the disease died this week despite being given the drug, as did a Spanish priest.

ZMapp, produced by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, has never been scientifically tested in people, and the current study was the first in primates.

The success is therefore a "monumental achievement," virologist Thomas Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch wrote in a commentary on the paper, published online in Nature.

There are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments, but human safety trials will begin next week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and this autumn on one from NewLink Genetics Corp.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed 1,552 people out of 3,069 confirmed cases, the World Health Organisation said.

The agency said the disease was on pace to infect 20,000 people. Neither governments nor private medical groups have been able to contain the outbreak, which WHO said will almost certainly continue into 2015.

Optimal mix

ZMapp is a mix of three antibodies that bind to proteins on Ebola viruses and trigger the immune system to destroy them.

ZMapp had previously developed two different cocktails of antibodies, but they protected only 43 percent of monkeys when given as late as five days after infection.

For the current study, scientists led by Gary Kobinger of the Public Health Agency of Canada set out to identify the optimal mix of antibodies from the earlier cocktails.

His team tested the antibodies in guinea pigs one at a time and in various combinations, identifying the two best performers last December.

The two graduated to tests in 12 rhesus monkeys. This spring the winner of that face-off, ZMapp, was given to another 18 infected monkeys - three doses at three-day intervals starting three, four or five days after infection.

All three untreated monkeys, in contrast, died of Ebola by day eight. With ZMapp, even advanced symptoms such as rashes, liver dysfunction and haemorrhaging disappeared, a result Kobinger called "beyond my own expectations"

"This is an extremely encouraging result," said David Evans, professor of virology at England's University of Warwick, who was not involved in the study.

The success suggests that ZMapp "offers the best option" for treating Ebola, Kobinger's team wrote, and should be tested for safety in people to enable its compassionate use "as soon as possible".

Wait, they found a cure?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Theres a case in Senegal

 

[Poitier]

Ebola Drug Saves Infected Monkeys
ZMapp is the first treatment to completely protect animals after they show symptoms of disease

Aug 29, 2014 |By Erika Check Hayden and Nature magazine

The drug — a cocktail of three purified immune proteins, or monoclonal antibodies, that target the Ebola virus — has been given to seven people.
Credit: CDC via Wikimedia Commons
ZMapp, the drug that has been used to treat seven patients during the current Ebola epidemic in West Africa, can completely protect monkeys against the virus, research has found.

The study, published online today inNature, comes the day after the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 1,500 people, is worsening and could infect 20,000 people before it ends. A fifth West African nation, Senegal, reported its first case of the disease on Friday.

Public-health experts say that proven measures, such as the deployment of greater numbers of health-care workers to stricken areas, should be the focus of the response. But ZMapp, made by Mapp Pharmaceutical in San Diego, California, is one of several unapproved products that the WHO has said could be used in the outbreak.

The drug — a cocktail of three purified immune proteins, or monoclonal antibodies, that target the Ebola virus — has been given to seven people: two US and three African health-care workers, a British nurse and a Spanish priest. The priest and a Liberian health-care worker who got the drug have since died. There is no way to tell whether ZMapp has been effective in the patients who survived, because they received the drug at different times during the course of their disease and received various levels of medical care.

In the study, designed and conducted in part by Mapp Pharmaceutical scientists, 18 monkeys were given three doses of the drug starting three, four or five days after they were infected with Ebola. All animals that received the drug lived, no matter when their treatment started; three monkeys that were not treated died.

The strain of Ebola virus used in the study is not the same as the one causing the current outbreak. But researchers showed that the antibodies in ZMapp recognize the current form of the virus in cell cultures, and the parts of the virus recognized by the drug are present in the strain of Ebola that has caused the outbreak.

Advanced disease
The findings make ZMapp the first drug shown to be highly effective against Ebola when given to monkeys that are already showing symptoms of infection, such as fever and abnormalities in proteins that aid blood clotting. That is important because unless a patient is known to have been exposed to the virus, symptoms such as fever are the first sign that he or she is infected and needs treatment.

Thomas Geisbert, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, estimates that day 5 of infection in the monkeys studied is roughly equivalent to days 7 to 9 of a human infection. People can develop symptoms up to 21 days after they contract Ebola, although signs commonly develop between 8 and 10 days after infection.

The study authors say that ZMapp works in an “advanced” stage of the disease. The drug was able to save one monkey that had bleeding under the skin affecting more than 70% of its body, and other monkeys that had enough virus in their blood to cause severe symptoms in people, says study co-author Gary Kobinger, an infectious-disease researcher at the Public Health Agency of Canada in Winnipeg.

“In humans, the large majority are unable to walk or even sit with this level, and most will die within 24 hours,” Kobinger says.

But other researchers say that the findings should be interpreted with caution, because monkeys with Ebola are not a perfect analogue for humans with the disease. “I don’t think the data support that this drug is effective, even in the animal model, in individuals with advanced Ebola disease,” says infectious-disease physician Charles Chiu at the University of California, San Francisco.

Knowing when to give the drug may help guide its use in future outbreaks. But for now, Mapp says that no more ZMapp is available and will not be for months.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on August 29, 2014.

 

[Poitier]

Experimental Drug Saves Monkeys Stricken With Ebola
by ROB STEIN

August 29, 2014 1:09 PM ET
All Things Considered

3 min 29 sec

• Download
• Transcript

A Public Health Agency of Canada worker seen inside the National Microbiology Laboratory's Level 4 lab in Winnipeg.

Public Health Agency of Canada/Nature
Scientists are reporting strong evidence that the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp may be effective for treating victims of the devastating disease.

A study involving 18 rhesus macaque monkeys, published Friday in the journal Nature, found that the drug saved 100 percent of the animals even if they didn't receive the drug until five days after they had been infected. The study is the first to test ZMapp in a primate, which is considered a good model for how a drug might work in humans.


Shots - Health News
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The drug has already been used on a handful of victims of the current Ebola outbreak raging in West Africa, including two American missionaries who recovered. But doctors say it's unclear what role ZMapp may have played, if any. At least two other Ebola victims who received ZMapp, including a Spanish priest and a Liberian doctor, died.


Goats and Soda
How Ebola Kills You: It's Not The Virus
But Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego, which developed the drug, has said it has exhausted its inventory. It would take months to produce any significant new supplies. So it remains unclear how much of a role the drug could play in the current outbreak, even if it proves to be effective in humans.

Nonetheless, Kobinger and others say the results are significant in the fight against Ebola. Despite many years of trying, there currently are no drugs or vaccines that have been shown to be effective for preventing or treating Ebola.

"The development of ZMapp and its success in treating monkeys at an advanced stage of Ebola infection is a monumental achievement," wrote Thomas W. Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in an article accompanying the study.

 

[TMNT4000]

@Poitier do you think the West is gonna use that drug to influence African policies.

 

[Hiphoplives4eva]

So was the medical protocol they took to get the cases down from 13 to 1??...if this this true ... ...... Does this mean they found the cure???

the united states refused to give zmapp to Nigeria. Local cures and good supportive care was all that was done.

 

[Poitier]

@Poitier do you think the West is gonna use that drug to influence African policies.

No

 

[TMNT4000]

No

Why?

This might be their chance to fukk over Nigeria plans to reclaim west Africa.

 

[Poitier]

Why?

This might be their chance to fukk over Nigeria plans to reclaim west Africa.

America really isn't involved in Africa like that, as far as trade. If it was France then a different story.

 

[Poitier]

The Changing Face Of West Africa Has Fueled The Ebola Crisis
by JASON BEAUBIEN

September 05, 2014 4:59 PM ET
All Things Considered

4 min 9 sec

• Download
• Transcript

Ebola has spread through Monrovia, Liberia's congested capital city.

John Moore/Getty Images
There's been a lot of finger-pointing this week over whom to blame for the slow response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Questions are being raised about why this epidemic has spun out of control and turned into the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

The inability of local health care providers and international aid groups to contain the virus is part of the problem. But major demographic and environmental changes in Africa are also contributing to the crisis.

The Africa of today is far different from the Africa of 1976 when Ebola was first discovered. Over the past four decades, the population of the continent has tripled. Forests have been cut down. Roads have sliced into areas that used to be almost inaccessible to outsiders.

These changes have made it more likely that Ebola outbreaks will occur and that when they do, they'll affect more people than in the past.

"If we just take a look at this current Ebola outbreak, the virus hasn't changed, Africa has changed," says Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "We now have this virus in an urbanized population among people who travel far and wide."

In the past, most Ebola outbreaks happened in remote, sparsely populated parts of Central Africa. Health officials controlled the outbreaks by quarantining the affected villages. The outbreak didn't spread because the people couldn't go anywhere.

In the current outbreak, people infected with Ebola have ended up on buses, communal taxis and airplanes. "That's the modern world we live in today," says Osterholm. "And trying to control an infectious agent in that world is very different than it was 20 or 30 years ago."

i
As forests are cut down in Liberia (above) and other parts of Africa, there's more human activity — and a greater chance for viruses like Ebola to jump from animals to people.

AFP/Getty Images
Making things worse, the population growth and deforestation happening across Africa increase the chances that more outbreaks like this one will occur.

Most of the time, the Ebola virus lives inside animals — probably fruit bats — in the jungle. Outbreaks occur when Ebola "spills over" from its animal host to a person. Jonathan Epstein, an epidemiologist with the EcoHealth Alliance in New York who studies emerging viral diseases, says increased human activity in and around forests — logging, farming, hunting — creates more chances for viruses like Ebola to jump over to people. "So this is really a probability game," he says. "This is a matter of opportunity for spillover to happen."

While it's impossible to pinpoint whether cutting down one particular forest led to one particular disease outbreak, Epstein says humans are making these outbreaks worse.

In West Africa, the virus is being carried by passengers on buses that link remote rural villages to capital cities. It's spreading through social rituals such as funerals. The virus is moving from person to person in hospitals.

"This outbreak is totally driven by social dynamics," says Epstein. "This, right now, is the largest outbreak because of factors that really have to do with people."

It's being fueled not just by population growth and new transportation networks but also by human emotion. When people with Ebola are afraid and flee treatment centers, they end up spreading the virus further.

Back when Ebola first emerged the Cold War was on, and the world was also very different politically. If the U.S. or the Soviet Union wanted to provide aid during a humanitarian crisis or stomp out an outbreak, they simply did it.

Today that's no longer the case, says Osterholm of CIDRAP: "We don't always know who's in charge; we don't know what they're in charge of. We have all these other changes that are occurring, and yet we still have the same infectious agents emerging. This concept of a changing world is really an important one and raises the question of what are we going to do in the future."

Because one thing is certain: The changes that have led to this crisis are not going away.

 

[Poitier]

Many in West Africa May Be Immune to Ebola Virus
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.SEPT. 5, 2014

Photo

The Ebola virus.CreditCenter for Disease Control, via Associated Press

Times Topic: The Ebola Outbreak in West Africa

• Right now, there are about 1,800 survivors of the current West African outbreak, all of whom are now immune, of course. But there may be many thousands more.
  
  
  
  OPEN GRAPHIC
  Small studies of household contacts of Ebola victims show that some people are infected without ever falling ill — perhaps because of some unknown genetic advantage.
  
  But many Africans who have never seen a victim also have antibodies.
  
  It is possible that some get low doses of virus by eating infected monkeys or bats that are undercooked.
  
  “If someone got just two or three or four virus particles, if it enters through the mucus membranes in the mouth, yes, it’s plausible,” said Thomas W. Geisbert, a hemorrhagic fever expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “It would take a while for the virus to get going, and it’s a race with the clock. The immune system gets a chance to fight it off.”
  
  Antibodies, Y-shaped proteins that attach to a virus and block it from invading cells, are the immune system’s first line of defense; the second line is white blood cells primed to recognize and digest the virus.
  
  One of France’s leading Ebola experts says he believes that many rural villagers are “vaccinated” by eating fruit gnawed on by bats and contaminated with their saliva.
  
  “We imagine that this is the main route,” said Dr. Eric M. Leroy, a veterinarian and virologist at the International Center for Medical Research in Franceville, Gabon. “But it is a hypothesis. We do not have the evidence.”
  
  Determining the overall level of immunity in West Africa would require testing thousands of blood samples, an impossible task in the current chaos, especially when any slip of a needle or a broken vial could fatally infect a health worker.
  
  But in 2010, Dr. Leroy led such a study in Gabon, a Central African country that had four Ebola outbreaks from 1994 to 2002.
  
  His teams took 4,349 blood samples in 220 randomly selected villages. They found that 15 percent of Gabon’s population had antibodies. But it varied widely: near the coast, only 3 percent did; in some jungle villages near the Congo border, up to 34 percent did.
  
  Also, their antibody levels varied widely, and what level is protective is roughly known for lab monkeys, but not for humans.
  
  “I don’t think we have a good idea of what constitutes a person who’s going to survive versus a person who’s going to succumb,” said Randal J. Schoepp, head of diagnostics at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., who led a study of blood from patients in a Sierra Leone hospital who were originally thought to have Lassa fever but did not. Nearly 9 percent had Ebola antibodies — and the samples dated from as far back as 2006, proving that the virus circulated long before this year’s outbreak.
  
  Also, there is anecdotal evidence that some West Africans are resistant. Victims have relatives who never get sick. At the funeral of a traditional healer where 14 women became infected, at least 26 other mourners did not, Dr. Garry said, even though most probably touched the body.
  
  There is firm evidence for silent infections.
  
  In 2000, Dr. Leroy’s team studied 24 Gabonese who had tended victims without ever falling ill. Eleven had not just antibodies but remnants of virus and markers of inflammation in their blood — meaning they had clearly been infected but had defeated the virus on their own.
  
  A similar 1999 study by American scientists in the Democratic Republic of Congo found similar results in five of 152 household contacts.
  
  Those who are immune can donate blood containing antibodies to be given to acutely ill patients, as was done for Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the first two Americans to get Ebola. He survived, although his Emory University doctors later said it was unclear whether the transfusion or an experimental drug,ZMapp, containing cloned antibodies, helped him at all.
  
  Having those who are immune be caregivers and body carriers makes sense, said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  
  “But we can’t count on their immunity,” he added. “They would still need full personal protective gear.”
  
  Relying on such measures may be inevitable, Dr. Garry said, adding: “There’s no more ZMapp out there. It’s time for creative solutions.”
  
  A version of this article appears in print on September 6, 2014, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Many in West Africa Are Thought to Be Immune, but Finding Them Will Not Be Easy. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
  
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