The Nigerian health authorities have put health workers on red alert following the resurgence of Ebola epidemic in Guinea.
While speaking at the Presidential Task Force briefing on COVID-19, Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire disclosed that health services have been put on alert on land, while sea and Air borders as well as major hospitals have also been put on notice for a keen index and to check patient travel history.
He said further that Nigeria is ever willing to send experienced volunteers from its Centers of Excellence on Viral hemorrhagic fever, to support the World Health Organization’s measures to contain Ebola resurgence in West African sub region.
He emphasized that it would be important to protect the sub region from the catastrophic burden of dealing with two severe diseases of public health concern.
The minister, in view of the recent developments, called on Nigerians to limit foreign trips only to very essential ones, and to altogether avoid high burden countries and those with particularly deadly disease outbreaks for now, so as not to pick up such diseases or become a vehicle for their importation.
The Ebola virus disease index case in Nigeria was a Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, who flew from Liberia to Nigeria’s most populous city of Lagos on 20 July 2014.
By 9 October 2014, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) acknowledged Nigeria’s positive role in controlling the effort to contain the Ebola outbreak.
The WHO’s representative in Nigeria described Nigeria’s effort to contain the virus as spectacular and officially declared the country to be Ebola free on 20 October after no new active cases were reported.
By Hussein Jama
February 17, 2021
