CORPORATE NIGERIA QUAKES OVER EBOLA SAGA
BY ABDULMUMINI ADEKU,SANJAY GUPTA
………………………………..UBA BANS FOOD BUSINESS IN NIGERIA,NEAR FRACAS
INSIDE SHOPRITE
………………………………STREETS OF SIERRA LEAONE,LIBERIA,GUINEA
DERSERTED AS SOLDIERS MOVE IN AGAINST EBOLA
………………………………….GUINEAN FAMILY WITH A UNIQUE EBOLA STORY
…………………………………..AFRICAN BEVELOPMENT BANK DISBURSES $50MILLION
TO FIGHT EBOLA
…………………………………….WORLD BANK GRANTS $200 MILLION TO THE SIERRA
LEONE,LIBERIA,GUINEA TO FIGHT EBOLA
…………………………………..UNITED STATES USES SECRET SERUM TO CURE 2
MISSIONARIES
……………………………………..MANO RIVER UNION DEVASTATED OVER EBOLA VIRAL
ATTACK
……………………………………..GDP OF AFFECTED NATIONS AT STAKE
The United Bank For Africa Plc has moved quickly to check possible dissent among its rank and file as it has banned all owners of food businesses from operating in any of its branch outlet worldwide.
Analysts believe that in the wake of the greatest break of the deadliest attack of Ebola Virus in living memory, financial supermarket aims to check possible pandemonium in the bank by stopping businesses that operate restaurant chains that sells various food for its staff.
It is not immediately known how many of its staff will be affected worldwide but it will appear that thousands of workers will be affected by this latest measure aimed at protecting the health of the workers as it will limit the exposure of workers to a rowdy environment.
Paedia Express Multimedia gathered in Lagos,Nigeria from one of the banks branches that the new measure has met with a lot of reservation from the bank's workers.
A staff speaks "they have said that we should make our private arrangement for food and that those that sell for us in the various canteens should stop henceforth,now what do they expect us to do"
"Ebola Virus disease is in the air because it is viral, you cannot hug, shake hands , you cannot even seat near a passenger in a bus ,it is a terrible situation"
United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) is a bank with business offices in 19 countries in Africa including Nigeria plus New York, London and Paris.
It offers universal banking services to more than 7 million customers across 626 branches. Formed by the merger of the commercially focused UBA and the retail focused Standard Trust Bank in 2005, the Bank purports to have a clear ambition to be the dominant and leading financial services provider in Africa.[2] Listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 1970, UBA claims to be rapidly evolving into a pan-African full service financial institution.[3] The Group adopted the holding company model in July 2011.As of December 2011, the valuation of UBA Group's total assets was approximately US$12.3 billion (NGN:1.94 trillion), with shareholders' equity of about US$1.07 billion (NGN:170 billion).
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United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc;
one of the largest financial services institution in Africa, has released its
unaudited financial results for the first six months of the year, showing
positive growth in financial indices.
In the unaudited financial
results, released to the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday, UBA recorded
a gross earnings of N138 billion, representing an increase of 8.66% over the
N127 billion recorded in the same period in 2013.
Growth in gross earnings was
boosted by an 11% increase in interest income to N98.5 billion in the first
half of 2014 from N88.6 billion in the comparative period of 2013.
There were also increases in other
financial indices; Net interest income was up 3.4% to
N55.2 billion, non-interest income rose 3.1% to N39.8 billion; operating
income was up 2.7% to N92.2 billion and profits stood at N29
billion for the period.
Commenting on the results,
Phillips Oduoza, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, assured
that the UBA Group remained focused on its medium and long term strategies to
grow market share in all its businesses across Africa, manage costs down and
ultimately deliver value to all stakeholders.
“We are confident that business
returns will be much better in the remaining period of the year as we
continue to deploy new and innovative ways of delivering value adding
products and services” said Oduoza.
United Bank for Africa Plc is one
of Africa's leading financial institutions offering banking services to more
than 7 million customers across over 700 business offices in 19 African
countries.
With presence in New York,
London and Paris, UBA is connecting people and businesses across Africa
through retail, commercial and corporate banking, innovative cross border
payments, trade finance and investment banking
In a related issue, Paedia Express
Multimedia was told of how a woman that sneezed unconsciously in one of the
stores inside Shoprite in Lekki Peninsular,Lagos caused a near stampede as
everybody within the vicinity took cover because of the fear of Ebola Virus
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Hundreds of troops have been deployed in Sierra
Leone and Liberia
to fight the worst outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, as the death toll
climbed to 887 and three new suspected cases of the highly contagious disease
were reported in Nigeria.
With healthcare systems in the west Africa
nations completely overrun by the epidemic, the African Development
Bank said yesterday it would immediately disburse $50 million to Sierra
Leone, Liberia and Guinea
– the country’s worst affected – as part of an international effort to contain
it.
The World Health Organization, which warned last week of catastrophic
consequences if the disease is not controlled, reported 61 new deaths in the
two days to August 1st. The outbreak began in February in the forests of
Guinea, where the toll continues to rise, but its epicenter has since shifted
to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In Nigeria, where US citizen Patrick Sawyer died of Ebola in
late July after arriving from Liberia, the WHO reported three new cases, two of
them probable and one suspected.
Panic among local communities, which have attacked health workers
and threatened to burn down isolation wards, prompted Sierra Leone, Liberia and
Guinea to impose tough measures last week, including the closure of schools and
the quarantine of the remote forest region hardest hit by the disease.
Long convoys of military trucks ferried troops and medical
workers on Monday to Sierra Leone’s far east, where the density of cases is
highest. Military spokesman Col Michael Samoura said the operation, code- named
Octopus, involved about 750 military personnel.
Troops would gather in the southeastern town of Bo before
travelling to isolated communities to implement quarantines, he added.
Healthcare workers would be allowed to come and go freely, and the communities
would be supplied with food.
In neighboring Liberia, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and
ministers held a crisis meeting on Sunday to discuss a series of anti-Ebola
measures as police contained infected communities in the northern Lofa county.
Police were setting up checkpoints and roadblocks for key
entrance and exit points to those infected communities, with nobody allowed to
leave quarantined communities. Troops were fanning out across Liberia to help
deal with the emergency.
The government has said the bodies of all Ebola victims must be
cremated as fears rose that the disease could be spread by burials in
residential areas. At least 17 bodies have been abandoned on Monrovia’s streets
in recent days, health officials said.
WHO chief Margaret Chan warned regional leaders last week that
Ebola was outpacing their efforts to contain it and pledged to organize a $100
million international response to bring the outbreak under control. US
officials and multilateral agencies were due to discuss the emergency at a
three-day US-Africa summit in Washington,
starting yesterday.
It has been reported that in Monrovia, several clinics were
spontaneously closing their doors as doctors were too afraid to treat patients.
More than 60 doctors have already died of Ebola, hampering efforts to control
the outbreak. – (Reuters)
In a related issue,The World Bank
yesterday announced up to $200 million in emergency assistance to help Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea, to contain the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. The
funding will alsohelp those countries to improve their public health systems
and cope with the epidemic's economic impact, the Washington-based lender said
in a statement.The countries' resources and health systems have been strained by the worst outbreak of the virus since its discovery four decades ago.
Guinea's economic growth could fall by a full percentage point to 3.5 per cent due to the epidemic, according to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's initial assessment.
"I have been monitoring (Ebola's) deadly impact around the clock and I'm deeply saddened at how it has ravaged health workers, families and communities, disrupted normal life and has led to a breakdown of already weak health systems in the three countries," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement.
The global bank said its money would go toward medical supplies, salaries for medical workers and to help communities dealing with the financial hardship caused by the virus.
Rural workers in the three countries hit with Ebola have fled affected areas, hitting agricultural production, though the food supply has not been affected for now, the bank said.
The epidemic has also slowed cross-border commerce and grounded flights across the region, leading to lower revenues and financial inflows.
Mining production could also decline, if more skilled expatriate workers leave the affected regions, the bank said.
The World Bank's executive board must still approve the emergency lending. Kim said he would brief the board as soon as possible to seek their approval.
Meanwhile,a Mano River Union (MRU) Summit to adopt fresh strategy to
fight the world’s deadliest Ebola epidemic
opened last week Friday in the Guinean capital, Conakry. At the Summit,
MRU members, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire, discussed ways to fight the outbreak that has killed
over 700 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since February, making it
the largest and deadliest ever, according to the World Health Organization
(WHO).
Meanwhile, the WHO’s General
Director, Dr Margaret Chan is presently in Guinea where she will discuss with
the authorities on how to rein in the spread of the epidemic.
France and the United States of
America have officially advised their citizens not to travel to Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone, three of the most-affected countries.
Washington has even announced the
temporary withdrawal of its 340 Peace Corps volunteers in Guinea.
Ebola causes fever, vomiting,
bleeding and diarrhoea and kills up to 90 percent of those it infects. Highly
contagious, it is transmitted through contact with blood or other fluids
The US may have found a cure
to Ebola? And if they have, will they come help patients of this dreaded
disease in Africa? The article below was written by Dr. Sanjay Gupta for
CNN and they are saying an experimental drug called ZMapp likely saved the
lives of 2 US missionary doctors (pictured above) who contracted the disease
while working in Liberia…see report below from CNN..
Three vials containing an experimental drug stored at subzero temperatures were flown into Liberia last week in a last-ditch effort to save two American missionary workers who had contracted Ebola, according to a source familiar with details of the treatment.
The drug appears to have worked, sources say. Dr. Kent Brantly’s and Nancy Writebol’s conditions significantly improved after receiving the medication, sources say. Brantly was able to walk into Emory University Hospital in Atlanta after being evacuated to the United States last week, and Writebol is expected to arrive in Atlanta on Tuesday.
On July 22, Brantly woke up feeling feverish. Fearing the worst,
Brantly immediately isolated himself. Writebol’s symptoms started three days
later. A rapid field blood test confirmed the infection in both of them after
they had become ill with fever, vomiting and diarrhea. It’s believed both
Brantly and Writebol, who worked with the aid organization Samaritan’s Purse,
contracted Ebola from another health care worker at their hospital in Liberia,
although the official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case
investigation has yet to be released.
A representative from the National Institutes of Health contacted
Samaritan’s Purse in Liberia and offered the experimental treatment, known as
ZMapp, for the two patients, according to the source
The drug was developed by the biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.,
which is based in San Diego. The patients were told that this treatment had
never been tried before in a human being but had shown promise in small
experiments with monkeys.
According to company documents, four monkeys infected with Ebola survived after being given the therapy within 24 hours after infection. Two of four other monkeys that started therapy within 48 hours after infection also survived. One monkey that was not treated died within five days of exposure to the virus.
Brantly and Writebol were aware of the risk of taking a new, little
understood treatment and gave informed consent, according to two sources
familiar with the care of the missionary workers. In the monkeys, the
experimental serum had been given within 48 hours of infection. Brantly didn’t
receive it until he’d been sick for nine days.
The medicine is a three-mouse monoclonal antibody, meaning that mice were exposed to fragments of the Ebola virus and then the antibodies generated within the mice’s blood were harvested to create the medicine. It works by preventing the virus from entering and infecting new cells.
The Ebola virus causes viral hemorrhagic fever, which refers to a group of viruses that affect multiple organ systems in the body and are often accompanied by bleeding.
Early symptoms include sudden onset of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. They later progress to vomiting, diarrhea, impaired kidney and liver function — and sometimes internal and external bleeding.
The ZMapp vials reached the hospital in Liberia where Brantly and Writebol were being treated Thursday morning. Doctors were instructed to allow the serum to thaw naturally without any additional heat. It was expected that it would be eight to 10 hours before the medicine could be given, according to a source familiar with the process.
How did you contract Ebola?
I am an agronomist and I have two children, one boy and one
girl. I work in the pharmacy at the health center of Gueckedou in southern
Guinea. When my father was hospitalized at the health center I naturally
volunteered to be at his bedside so other family members would not have to make
the daily trek of tens of kilometers, traversing the trails between their
village and the facility. I cleaned him when he vomited and also did his
laundry. I also often gave him food and drink. He had diarrhea at least eight
times per day but I did not know he was suffering from Ebola.
Five days after being hospitalized, [my father] passed away.
After his death the medical staff realized he had presented Ebola symptoms and
as I had close contact with him, it meant that I was at risk. So they told me
that I needed to be followed up for 21 days and if ever I felt a small fever I
had to come to the health center. The countdown then started for me: after nine
days I got fever and this persisted until the 11th day. Finally I went to the
treatment center -- where I did an Ebola test which was positive.
What were the symptoms? How
did you feel while you were ill?
I first got a fever which persisted. My body temperature reached
nearly 40C (104 degrees Fahrenheit). After that I had diarrhea, vomits,
dysentery and hiccups [all symptoms of Ebola]. I went to the toilet several
times a day and I felt so tired and uncomfortable.
How and where were you
treated?
I received medical assistance at the Ebola treatment center,
put in place at the health centre of Gueckedou. The medical staff provided me
with oral medications and infusions. They also provided me with food. I
suffered at lot in the beginning with diarrhoea and hiccups but with the
treatment I started to feel better.
What was the initial reaction
in your home village after you recovered?
Joy, for my family because everyone thought that I would not
survive this disease as many others people had died. However before the medical
staff released me to go back to my family they tested me three times to make
sure that I really had recovered. Afterwards they gave me a certificate of
discharge. They also visited my family, the leaders and elders of my community
to inform them that I had recovered and I was no longer contagious.
Despite this, I was stigmatized. Some people avoided me in
the beginning but now, over time, they have learned to accept me. Now they call
me "anti-Ebola."
You're now working with Red
Cross volunteers in Guinea to raise awareness of the disease: what lessons are
passing on?
I am part of a team of Red Cross volunteers, visiting
communities, raising awareness on how to prevent the spread of the disease. One
of the messages I try to pass on to the communities is to go early to the
health center when sufferers first feel symptoms. The treatment is free of
charge. People there will give you food and clothes and you can get a chance to
survive.
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