Tackling the invasion of Ebola Reston virus

By Floro M. Mercene

LAST week, an international team of human and animal health experts arrived in Manila to conduct an epidemiological study relative to the reemergence of the Ebola Reston virus in local swine.

The 10-day investigation now being conducted by a team from the World Health Organization, Office International des Epizootes and the Food and Agriculture Organization was in response to a call by Secretary Arthur Yap of the Department of Agriculture for these experts to help the Philippines craft a national surveillance plan as well as a diagnostics and disease prevention program to beat this virus for good.***

The Ebola Reston virus was detected late last year in a few hogs in Bulacan and Pangasinan. The Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health won praise from international experts and local industry leaders last December for what Dr. Soe Nyunt-U, the WHO country representative in the Philippines, had described as the Arroyo government’s "appropriate action" in dealing with this animal health risk.

A potential health crisis was nipped in the bud owing to the swift and decisive measures taken by the DA in response to the reemergence of the virus, which first surfaced in the world in 1989 in the Ferlite monkey farm in Calamba, Laguna.

*** Secretary Yap had ordered the quarantine of the farms in Pangasinan and Bulacan where the virus was detected. He directed the Bureau of Animal Industry to closely monitor the movement of hogs and pork meat by setting up hog checkpoints.

He also instructed the National Meat Inspection Service to check for the presence of any contaminated pork meat in the market and slaughterhouses and to strict in the issuance of health certifications on animal shipments.

As an extra precautionary measure, Yap also ordered the temporary suspension of the country’s first-ever pork export to Singapore until such time that the Reston problem has been fully checked.

The BAI has also requested the FAO for assistance in testing 10,000 heads of domestic swine for the possible presence of the virus and to determine the source of the infection.

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