By Mustapha Kamara Jnr
The Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) and the National Ebola Response Center (NERC) are insisting that a specimen from a stillborn baby delivered at the Aberdeen Women Center (AWC) last month is Ebola positive.
The incident caused a row between the NERC and the hospital which accused the former of violating protocol and questioned the authenticity of test result.
AWC is a privately run institution that provides free healthcare services to women and children from mainly the community around Aberdeen and elsewhere in the country.
Conflicting Ebola test results are not new in Sierra Leone but this time what makes the case even more bizarre is that it involved a stillborn baby whose mother, a 19-year old teenager, has consistently tested negative for the virus.
A health ministry official said Wednesday a series of laboratory tests undertaken at different laboratories found the baby positive for Ebola while the mother was negative.
“An ultra sound revealed that her fetus was already dead in the uterus, labor was induced to get the fetus out,” said Abdul Kamara, Manager of the National Laboratory Services in Sierra Leone, who was also in charge of the investigation.
During all of the 36 weeks of her pregnancy, she didn’t show any sign or symptom of the Ebola virus, he told journalists at the weekly NERC press conference.
According to officials, the swab specimen of the child was collected by lab technicians in Lakka and was delivered to the Ministry of Health’s Laboratory in Lakka on the same day, 25th May 2015.
“… The specimen was tested on the same day at 12.45 pm… , it came out clearly that the child was Ebola positive with a CT value of 21.35,” Kamara said, adding that that was a very high viral load which was too much for a baby to carry.
He said even the technicians were astonished by the result and therefore ordered that the specimen should be sent to other laboratories to prove if indeed the first test was correct.
Further tests were carried out, including at labs run by the Chinese and Italians.
Having tested the child positive of the virus, MoHS thought it was wise to conduct another test on the mother to prove the doubt about the rare incident.
Interestingly, he said, some results showed that the woman was negative of the Ebola virus whiles another test result showed she was IGG positive, which means she had been exposed to the virus but was not infected.
The laboratory service manger further explained that the reason was so because the woman had a strong immune system that was able to resist the disease.
“What happen is very rare…therefore this is opportunity for the government of Sierra Leone to strengthening pregnancy management at all levels,” said Abdul Kamara.
He said such a rare incident is a lesson for all medical doctors to avoid being complacent with the EVD and continue to put on their personal protective gears and adhere to other standards of health procedures so as to protect themselves from contracting the disease.
AWC had contested the result and expressed concern about the conduct of the NERC, which it said announced the test result even before informing the center, as had been agreed.
But on Wednesday Mr Augustine Kutubu-Kosia, Programme Manager of the center, told Politico that since the result comes from the competent authorities, they had no reason to contest it. But he added that they were uncomfortable with the manner in which the NERC handled the situation.
NERC has also failed to respond to a number of requests, which include conducting an anti-body test, as opposed to the usual test that only looks for the presence of the virus, he said. These requests were forwarded by the Gloag Foundation, a Scottish charity which funds AWC.
“At least with what we know about Ebola, there should have been signs and symptoms of the virus on the mother,” Kosia said.
