How Culture Influences Spread of Ebola Virus - 9ja Agric Quarantine Service

The Coordinating Director, Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), Doc. Feyisetan Kola in this interview with Olugbenga Adanikin explained how cultural system influenced EVD spread in the country as well as mandates of the service. 

Coordinating Director, Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), Doctor Feyisetan Kola

What’s the significance of the NAQS?

The name basically implies our focus which is dealing with plant, animals and aquatic resources such as fish. We are created to prevent spread of exotic diseases and pests in terms of plants and animals. We are facing the challenges of Ebola virus. We are involved in agricultural research which also involves animals, specifically chimpanzee, monkey and bush rat. 

These ones serve as reservoir hosts for Ebola virus. That is, they have the virus embedded in them but they don’t share it, they keep it to themselves. But when human has contact with them through bites or scratch, then they transfer the infection to humans. Therefore, quarantine has one job to do which is to break the link between the animals and human and this can be done by preventing incursion of wild animals into the country. It can be through the land borders, seas or by air. Actually, before animals come into this country, there should be a check but we take care of the quarantine aspect because we operate along the borders, seaports and airports.

Can you tell us more on the effectiveness of NAOS in preventing importation or exportation of contaminated livestock?

I have read about the exportation of contaminated snails from Nigeria into the US even before newspapers carried the story on the internet and immediately I saw it I set up a committee to look into it. Actually we are working at the Lagos international airport, NAHCO and SAHCOL, such product supposed to pass through NAHCO and I have tried as much as possible to probe into that situation, we went through all the manifest and documents but there was no record. This means, it was smuggled out. The committee went as far as collecting the manifest of all the airlines, but there was nothing like that. At the same time, we don’t export live snails to US, it is under ban. So no staff of NAQS will even dangle into it and now that the snails are large species, they would weigh up to eight or nine inches long and snails are reservoir for some parasites. It is after a lot of processing, may through drying, cooking etc., because some people while travelling seen some things as delicacies in smaller quantity, it can be exported but not live snails, even that there is need for permission for that. So I was surprise when I saw about 67 large snails in about two or three containers. The way it scale through the airport was my problem, because you need to declare whatever you are going out with  especially agricultural products must be declared, it is either they did not declare it correctly or they forged documents in connivance with some agencies working with the airlines.

Are you doing anything to prosecute those involved?

If we have information concerning them, it would be easier to prosecute but there is no document. It was the way you saw it on paper that was the way I saw it. I went as far as the federal livestock department to see if there was any health certificate but there was none, so there was nothing to show for it, it was being smuggled into US.

Concerning the Ebola virus, there were stories on how it could be transmitted through rodents such as bat gorilla, monkeys etc. do you have any means of preventing their importations into the country?

Rodents are associated with Lassa fever but when you talk about Ebola virus, livestock are involved, the primates, bats, monkeys are involved because they are relavoriot. They inhabit the virus without being affected but in chimpanzee, if the level is high, it can come down with the disease but others like monkeys, bats, apes would not, the only time they are involved is when you have close contact with this animals. That is when they are being processed like as delicacies.

Immediately we heard about the virus, we sent alert to our staff in the four zonal offices so that they would be alerted on what to be done when they see such thing, we know that monkeys, primates passes along our borders. We sent the message to our four zonal offices and 39 field offices along the border, informing them to be careful and well protected while dealing with any issue concerning that. They much use personal protective coverage to protect that from direct contact with these animals. We also alerted them on inter-state movement of the animals to disallow them from passing from one state to the other, we called it control post. At the same time, we discourage people from eating bush meat, except you can prove the origin, because if it is from areas where they have the virus, mere displaying it and an effected person touches it, it is already infected.

Is it just temporary until the virus goes away?

 Ebola is a viral infection, as a vet doctor, I know what it means, when an individual has viral infection, there is no treatment and there is no vaccine to control it except it runs its course and complete it. There are different kinds of viral infections, but some people are immune against some of these diseases. If one is immune and is fortunate to come out of the disease, he/she can transmit it within the next seven weeks before he is fully recovered.

Bats are all around us, is there anything we can do to stop them from flying?

The only contact flying bats have with humans is when they are killed, when they are in large quantity, there is no way human can have contact with them, except the ones brought down by human. Also if bat eats fruits, it transfers the virus into the fruit and if one picks such fruit and eat, he/she is liable to contact the virus. So we have to advocate against picking of fruits that falls from the tree as a ways to contain the spread the virus.

Talking about smuggling, things can be smuggled into the country not only through the airports but also through the sea ports and other means, do you have any arrangement to prevent any smuggling or animals?

We operate along all the borders, land, sea and airports. Our Staff there is working 24 hours. The sea ports’ gates are looked after some times, that is the time we get out of the place and comes back the next day. We work in conjunction with other security agencies long the border. And the current Custom regime in the country does not allow for any such thing. You have to first make a declaration which is done electronically, so clearing is done without passing through the electronic single window system, so there is no more issue of smuggle through the sea ports.

There are some communities in Nigeria that their livelihood depend on hunting of animals, they even eat them, is there any collaboration with sister agencies to sensitize these people on the risk?

Chimpanzee, monkeys are wide animals handled by the ministry of environment, let’s assume that wide animals is to be transfer from one place to another, we collect ‘certies’ this is the health certificate from the ministry, after which we now do our quarantine of the animals to certify it. Hunting wide animals is under ban; all along, those killing wide animals are working against the law. You know our culture also contributes somehow because our forefathers are used to it. In a civilised country like US, there is total ban of killing wild animals. Also there are no proper demarcations between some countries’ border and Nigeria.

There are exotic animals being brought into the country for cross breeding, is there means of monitoring this movements?

In Nigeria we have cows with big horns but in some countries, their cows are hornless. If governments or private investors want to upgrade their gens or breed of their cows, it is either they import the live animals or import the semen. While importing the semen, it has to pass through quarantine, because we have six different departments under the NAQS. We have animal, plants quarantine departments. So if an individual is importing animals from abroad, there must be country of origin inspection before import permit could be given. When the animals get here, we clear them and take them to our quarantine station for further checks. They would be quarantine for at least 21 days to monitor their health status and to stabilize them for our climatic condition before they would be released to the owner.

How do you prevent importation of dangerous fishes into the country?

Yes, before you bring fish into the country, you must collect the import license, while the species of fish and range will be made known. Getting here, we will quarantine the fishes. The pangacious you mentioned were smuggled into the country without our knowledge and when you bring such fishes, they will distort our fishing line and there are some that destroys our local population of fish. That is why we discourage it importation. The origin of pangatious is no Africa, it comes from South East Asia, so nobody can fish for it in the waters of Africa.   

We have countries that have borders with Nigeria linked by sea and we have fishermen that may cross the borders, how do you deal with these?

That is why we have our men along our borders and we are trying to increase our border patrol. The federal government has given the instruction to increase our staff because in terms of security we are involved because there can be biological war.

Some countries in Africa are doing GMOs in some crops but in Nigeria we need the bio-safety law and we are told that there are no GMO seeds in Nigeria, even though some may be smuggled in, because the output are high, do you have a way of checkmating this?

We are fully involved in the screening of any crops that comes into the country. It must pass through us. As we talking now, some of my staffs are abroad on training on GMOs. Two weeks ago we were informed on GMO on banana. And any GMO materials that may come into the country are specifically for research and we follow up the research from import permit to trier field until it is establish that the GMO is up to a particular level. They can smuggle it in but as much as possible with our staff in the quarantine we cannot cover the extensive border of this country. Seeds are things you can put in your pocket and with the kind of ports we have, someone can pocket seeds undeclared and come into the country but as much as possible we are doing within our limit to make sure that we target those people who are liable to that kind of smuggling looking at the passport or profile of the person. As far as we are concern GMO importations are strictly for research work.

Do we really need GMOs in Nigeria?

GMO products are targeted toward a particular aim. Like the one being developed on banana, there is some micronutrient that this GMO are fortified with. That is why they are good. The products may not be as sweet as the local ones but they are bigger.

You develop a particular product to meet a particular needs, the banana mentioned is vitamin A enriched banana. They are rich with the nutrient the children needs. The BT cotton was brought in for this kind of disease resistant cotton. So GMOs are for specific development.

For banana, international bodies have alerted us of some disease that we should guide against and I have written to all my officers along the border that they should not allow to those come in the country anyhow. We are notified to guide against it so that it would not affect the production of banana in this country.

Nigerians are of the opinion that why you modify something that God has created?

GMO is ok, it is being consumed in developed countries. It is targeted toward giving us a better life. In Quarantine, we do some survey, we call it crops survey. We pick a product to see the disease and pest. We give it to IITF to do the crop survey for us most of the time. What they do is that they go into all states of the country to get us pest free areas for that product. i.e products coming from those areas are free of pest and could be exported. We don’t stop at the borders; we still come into the country to monitor all the crops and plants imported into the country. Just like Dangote that imported some agro suckers from abroad, they were about two million suckers. We went for the country of origin inspection and coming back, we collected, quarantine them and follow it to the field.

For the enforcement of sanitary work, how do you deal with that? For instance our abattoirs are very unhygienic, what do you do about it?

When you talk of sanitary, as quarantine ours is to make sure that no pest of diseases are imported into this country. But when it comes to abattoirs, the only time we come into this, it is when you talk of exportation of the meat produced, so when we you to export meat, we know what we should do.

You have a lot to do, but do you have enough staff to do all these jobs?

I will say we have and we don’t have. Right away we are able 750 staff and is not enough because the federal government has extended our responsibilities again, that we should man more control post. So I will not say it is enough, because this is on shifting basis and we work 24 hours, so we are not?

Apart from this, what other challenges are you battling with?

There are a lot of challenges, at the end of the day everything still comes down to funding, though people hammer more on funding, we need more patrol vehicles. Because when you say you want to work and you are being demobilized to man a long porous border of about 4,074 kilometres and we are having about 1,500 illegal entering points, we need more staff and we are trying to standardize our laboratory to world acceptable level and at the same time, develop technicians that would man them. Another challenge we have is in the line of macho toxin of all these affecting our products, the time you harvest, the way you process, the storage, we have all this machines now to test that all our products meets the standard level and at the same time we are trying to see how our bill will be signed into law. Because that is the backing law for our operations, then when you are in the port, you can detain countenance for checking and you take simples to test if the products comply with the national standard. We have been operating on different level before the minister urged that we come together and the law harmonized but it remains to be signed into law.