A virus hunter in Nigeria has thoughts on the Ebola outbreak

[MUSIC PLAYING] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, it’s Flora, and you’re listening to Science Friday. The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring Uganda is caused by the Bundibugyo virus. There’s no specific treatment or vaccine for this strain, unlike the more common Zaire strain, which caused the 2014 outbreak.

Here to give us an update and put the news in context, is Dr. Christian Happi. He’s a molecular biologist who has dedicated his career to improving genomic sequencing capabilities and virus monitoring across the continent of Africa. Dr. Happi is a distinguished professor at Redeemer’s University and runs the Institute of Genomics and Global Health in Nigeria. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for being here.

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Thank you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So I want to start with the Bundibugyo virus. What’s different about it compared to this Zaire strain?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: The Bundibugyo virus, or strain of Ebola, is different from the Zaire strain simply because it has diverged. It has evolved. It has followed a different evolutionary path. And for that reason, the virus is quite divergent from the Zaire strain.

And that divergence actually creates its own challenge because diagnostics, vaccines, and drugs are often very strange specific, because they are targeting some very specific epitopes in any virus. And because of Bundibugyo virus has not been studied extensively, that is a reason why now, we want to use this outbreak in order to, not only sequence the virus, but actually, leverage the data that will be coming from the outbreak to develop the necessary countermeasures. And these countermeasures are drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Had it not been sequenced before?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Not really. I think when we had our last outbreak, when the Bundibugyo outbreak occurred, I think that was probably 2007, at that time, genomic sequencing was not really at the stage where it is now. It was a technology that was in infancy. And at that time, we didn’t have the capability, actually, to generate the data through genome sequencing.

And between 2007 and now, a lot has changed. And we really want to take advantage of it now, to study this virus in a way that wasn’t done before in order to develop the countermeasures, as I mentioned before.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Why hasn’t there been as much research into this strain?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Simply because the global health community, in general, and then the governments in Africa, in particular, have not really invested in surveillance. If we had intentionally invested in doing viral disease surveillance or to do pathogen genomic surveillance, we could have probably come across the virus, sequenced it, and then eventually, today, wouldn’t have been in the situation where we are.

So clearly, it’s simply because they have really not been intentional investment on disease surveillance using a genomic approach.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, that is exactly your thing, genomic surveillance?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Correct.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I want to talk a little bit about the Sentinel Project. You co-created this early warning pathogen detection network called Sentinel, along with Dr. Pardis Sabeti of the Broad Institute of MIT. Talk to me about Sentinel, and talk to me about your role in this outbreak.

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: The Sentinel system is an early warning system for pandemic preemption and response. It is that system that we invented and started implementing in 2014 to change the way we respond to disease outbreak. And in 2014, we tested and pressure tested and validated the Sentinel system.

FLORA LICHTMAN: In 2014, there was another Ebola outbreak.

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: That was when we had the largest Ebola outbreak, ever, and that was in West Africa. And the Sentinel system is built on three major pillars. The first pillar is, detect, which is, basically, detection in near real time of known and unknown pathogens and eventually, developing tools to detect pathogen very quickly and share this information with National Public Health authorities.

The second pillar is connect. That is basically making sure the information are available in near real time to policymakers and people across the decision-making chain so that they can use those information to make targeted and very coordinated intervention to respond to outbreak. Because we’ve realized that you need two major things to contain an outbreak. One, is speed. Second, is accuracy.

And then the third pillar is empower. Pretty much that is empowering all the actors that are involved in disease surveillance and in outbreak response in a way that everybody across the value chain is empowered and then they can actually use and we can coordinate the response in a way that, from grassroots to the top, everybody is involved, and everybody feels concerned.

The Sentinel system actually demonstrated its ability and its capability in 2014. For the first time, we were sequencing the genome of Ebola in West Africa and in Africa. We had an outbreak that started in Lagos, in a city with 23 million people, in a country of 230 million people. We deployed Sentinel. We work with public health authorities in Nigeria, and we show that we could control that outbreak in a very spectacular way.

Nigeria actually was able to contain the Ebola outbreak in 93 days, with only 20 cases and a death. That was the first demonstration of the power and the firepower behind the Sentinel program. And then we went further, in subsequent years, to contain local outbreaks.

I can give you the instance of a situation whereby in the southern part of Nigeria, for instance, within two weeks, 179 children died of a mysterious disease in court. A lot of the tests that they did locally proved negative. The Nigeria Center for Disease Control sent 20 samples in our lab, and in 72 hours we established that it was yellow fever.

But then this yellow fever that was killing children of school age was different from the ones that have been circulating in Nigeria for the past 94 years. And within 10 days, that outbreak was contained, saving thousands of lives.

The Sentinel system proved that it worked. It proved that it was efficient, and it proved that it can contain this outbreak in a very spectacular way at each time when we deployed it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So with this outbreak, was early detection a challenge? I mean, I’ve read and I’d like your take on this, that the virus was possibly circulating for months before it was detected. Is that your assessment, and what happened?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Yes. I mean, the early detection was a challenge. Also, remember that this outbreak started in a place called Ituri. Ituri was a place where there’s almost virtually no government. The place is governed by armed groups, militias that are all controlling mineral resources. So I think when an outbreak starts in such a place where there’s virtually no government presence, who reports what, and then who actually takes the necessary measures to actually put that under control?

That’s what happened. But then it’s been circulating, but eventually, when it got to places where in Bunia, for instance, where there could be government presence, then you could see the governments of the country responding. I mean, the unfortunate part for this outbreak, it started in a place where, really there were there’s really no governance and then where the challenge for organizing a response to it was obvious.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I’ve heard you say that stories of Africa are often spoken out of Africa by people that don’t know Africa and don’t understand what Africa is all about. What do you think the West is getting wrong about this current outbreak?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Well, I don’t think it is about the West getting something wrong about the current outbreak. I think we are all getting it wrong, but Western Africa actually getting it wrong about the current outbreak. What we got wrong about the current outbreak is the fact that after SARS-CoV-2 or after COVID-19, we went back to sleep on our laurels. We went back to do business as usual.

We did not learn from COVID-19 or we learned, but we refuse to apply the lessons learned from COVID-19, which was basically understanding that we need to continue to intentionally do disease surveillance. We need to cooperate and work together. We need to ensure that we share information. We need to understand that we have to be very intentional in investing in research and development, and accelerate processes related to research and development and accelerate process related to vaccines, drugs, and diagnostic development.

We fail to understand that we need to put in place or strengthen the health system in places that are hard to reach, like the DRC and then other places in Africa. We fail to understand that an outbreak anywhere in the world should be considered as an outbreak all over the world, because an outbreak that starts anywhere can reach the market places within 48 hours. These are the failures that we all should assume.

So it is not the responsibility of the West. It is not the responsibility of sole residency one of the countries where this does happen. As a global and health community and as a people, we have failed to learn from COVID-19, and we might end up paying a heavy price for it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, speaking of resting on our laurels, are there other pathogens like Bundibugyo that public health officials should be paying attention to right now, even though they’re not an emergency right now?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: There are definitely, probably many other pathogens that we don’t even know about, that may be even more dangerous than Bundibugyo But yet if we were out there doing surveillance, we should be able to discover them before they get to us. The reality is that we keep, as humans, encroaching into nature as well. And because these are existing in nature, they have co-evolved with us over centuries.

They are out there, but we don’t really much about. But then we should have a system, we should establish a system where we are sharing information, where we are working together, where when you share information, we are not discriminated against, we are not stigmatized against. So we need to actually just keep working together and continue to do the surveillance, because nature, on its own, is a big laboratory. And we have to, rather, be very intentional, about studying nature and then understanding what is circulating in nature, and try to see how we can learn from those experiments to actually prepare better for potential disease outbreaks in the future.

There are several studies and several simulations that have said that in the next 10 years, the world will experience another major pandemic, with an increased number of deaths. But then the question is, are we preparing for it?

FLORA LICHTMAN: I have to take a quick break, but I’d like to ask you about your path and what drives you when we come back. Are you OK with that?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Sure.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I have heard you say that you look at pathogens circulating in Africa as an opportunity in disguise. Talk me through that idea.

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Yeah, absolutely. I keep saying that God has blessed Africa, not only with mineral resources. God has blessed Africa with a very powerful biodiversity. As part of the powerful biodiversity that Africa is endowed with are the pathogens.

And these pathogens, we shouldn’t just take these pathogens as just challenges. There are opportunities in disguise because they offer a unique opportunity for Africa to study them and then use the data from the studies of those pathogens to create the next generation diagnostics, next generation vaccines, and next generation drugs.

And these could be knowledge that Africa can share with the rest of the world. These are knowledge that are patentable, and these are also noted that can result into products that Africa actually can not only use for its own health self sovereignty, not only for his own health security, but also, to use to ensure global health security. That’s where the opportunity is.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, this seems key to your mission– health sovereignty, self-determination, self-reliance.

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How does the colonial legacy in Africa influence the way that you think about building science capacity in Africa?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Well, I do think that the colonial legacy in Africa has affected the continent very negatively. But again, I want to be very clear. I don’t think that the fact that it has affected us negatively, it is a full and sole responsibility for those that colonized Africans. The question that we should be asking today is, how much have the African countries done themselves to free themselves from the colonial mind and the colonial mindset.

How much have African countries done themselves to unite against the challenges that they do have? Africa will never evolve, and Africa will not take off if we do not ensure our own sovereignty. That’s what we need on the continent of Africa. We need to be very critical about it. I think we talk a lot of talks in Africa, but we walk a little bit.

I think we should stop talking. Let’s act more, and then let’s show the rest of the world that we can actually do things.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Colleagues of yours have described you as a force of nature. Is that how you self-identify?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: I’m not sure that I self-identify. That’s the way people see me, but I don’t think I self-identify as a force of nature. Colleagues of mine find that I don’t stop in front of any challenge. Let me put it this way. I don’t take no for an answer. I have very strong opinion, and I believe strongly into certain things. And I believe that once you believe in something, you gotta work hard to demonstrate that, actually, that belief is real and it’s correct.

I mean, any obstacle that you actually come across, you use that obstacle as a stepping stone, actually, to move higher. That’s a bit of what characterized me, where each obstacle actually make me more determined.

I think people that me very well, they will tell you that the best way to slow me is actually not to put any obstacle in front of me, because then I take things easy. But then if you put obstacles, then actually, you basically catalyze, you actually just make the best out of me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Would you be willing to share a little bit of your personal story, how you grew up, and how you found your way to molecular biology?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Oh, yeah. I grew up in Cameroon, a very rural place in Cameroon, in a place where there was a lot of malaria as a disease. I lost a lot of friends when we were young because of malaria. But then I’m one of those survivors. And I do believe that at the age of somewhere around eight or nine, I suffered one of the worst bouts of malaria that I ever suffered.

I was so sick I couldn’t stand. I tell you. And my mom carried me on her back and took me to the hospital. It was run by Catholic nuns. And I met one of the nuns was doctor. And then she diagnosed me for malaria. And then I was given an injection, I mean, which was quinine at the time.

But my mother, carried me on her back and then taking me back home, got to a point where she was tired. And she said, well, she needs to rest her back. Of course, she put me down, I couldn’t stand. And then I was leaning against a tree.

And I remember sitting down and I asked my mom, why am this ill? And she said, well, the doctor said you had malaria. And I told my mom, why is it that there’s no cure or something that will prevent people from having this disease? And my mom told me, I don’t. And I remember telling her immediately that Mom, when I grow up, if this disease is still on, I will find a cure for it.

That was what I told my mom at that age of eight or nine. A few years later, I saw a poster of James Watson and Francis Crick. These were the two people that discovered the DNA molecule, and my biology teacher was telling us that these are two biochemists. They discovered the structure of the DNA. The DNA is the most powerful molecule that exists, that DNA is a molecule of life.

I could connect at that point what the molecule of life is and the malaria parasite. I actually grew up chasing that malaria parasite. I decided to become a biochemist. I studied biochemistry, and I graduated with flying colors and look for a master’s degree program where they were studying malaria parasite.

I actually went to school at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria because there was a master’s degree program that was studying biochemistry applied to malaria. And eventually, after graduating my master’s degree program, I ended up at Harvard working on the malaria parasite, trying to understand the genetic makeup of this parasite and try to see how you could use that genetic makeup to actually eliminate and kill the parasite.

That is how I end up doing molecular biology and genomics, simply because I was chasing a [INAUDIBLE] called malaria.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It seems like you’ve only expanded your goal set. I mean, what would it take for you to feel like, OK, I’ve done it, I can rest?

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: I think we are building a strong base. We’re building a critical mass of young Africans. We’ve now build an institute, which is definitely one of is the biggest genomic platforms in Africa. So I think it is part of the journey where now the young Africans will have the platform, where they can express their God-given talent.

We’ve been able to train over 3,000 young African scientists across 53 of the 54 African countries. The question is, is that number enough? The answer is no. We need to do way more than that now. We also need to ensure that we have resources that will enable young Africans to do research, where they can actually leverage the platform that we’ve established to develop the next generation vaccines, the next generation diagnostics, the next generation drugs.

So I think once we already have fully established these platforms and we see the young Africans taking over, we will, eventually, take our rest and take a bow.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, creating a system so that any kid with a dream of curing a disease can have the resources to do it.

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Absolutely.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Dr. Christian Happi is a distinguished professor and director of the Institute of Genomics and Global Health at Redeemer’s University in Nigeria. Thank you so much for joining me today.

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure being on this program.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It was my pleasure. Thank you.

CHRISTIAN HAPPI: Thank you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Shoshannah Buxbaum produced this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving us a review or a rating on your favorite podcast app of choice. Thanks for listening. I’m Flora Lichtman.

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