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Political Jostling Overruns Nigeria’s Successful Ebola Eradication

Political Jostling Overruns Nigeria’s Successful Ebola Eradication

After nineteen confirmed cases and seven deaths, Nigeria may have successfully contained the highly dreaded Ebola virus disease according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Ebola was first reported in Nigeria on July 17 when acutely ill Patrick Sawyer arrived in the country from Monrovia Liberia through the nation’s busiest airport in Lagos Nigeria.

The decision to declare Nigeria Ebola-free was reached following the expiration of the 21-day incubation period for the viral disease.

What worked of the Nigerian government according to a TIME report was the quick declaration of the viral disease as a public health emergency, a well-coordinated emergency response that involved state and federal governments, engagement of social mobilizers that carried out house visits in areas where there had been suspected cases of  the disease.

Nigeria’s response was so good that the U.S. CDC sent its personnel to the west African country to learn how it managed to control the disease. The U.S. is grappling with a possible outbreak of Ebola after  a Liberia citizen Thomas Duncan fell critically ill with the disease five days after arriving in Dallas for a visit.

According to CDC’s Director Tom Frieden, the agency is learning from Nigeria and Senegal how both countries have been able to establish quick, thorough and extensive responses.

But in Nigeria the announcement by the Nigerian health ministry that the country is Ebola free, has quickly been turned into a political circus with various leaders jostling over who should “take the glory” for the achievement.

At rallies organized in various parts of the country, loyalists of the PDP-led federal government said the Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan deserves the credit. They said stemming the spread of Ebola is one of the achievements of the political party and the president.

But in his Independence Day address to the citizens of the state, Babatunde Fashola, the governor of APC-controlled Lagos state where the disease was first diagnosed, said those that should take the credit for conquering the virus are the healthcare professionals and others that were directly involved in the process of healthcare delivery and public health management.

“The question we must ask is whether those who make these claims saw Ebola? It is women like Stella Ameyo Adedevoh to whom such a claim rightly belongs,” Fashola said.

“It is young Nigerians like Dr. Morris Ibeawuchi, who first made contact with the index case patient and continued to treat him who saw and conquered Ebola.He (Dr Ibeawuchi ) got infected, from doing his job, got sick, survived and is back to his job.

Not yet time to celebrate

Vicky Ojo, a community health officer at the Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital, said it was not yet a time to celebrate or argue over who should take the credit for conquering Ebola.

“It is rather saddening that politicians are hijacking the entirely medical issue to gain cheap political points among the electorate. Ebola was conquered when both state and federal governments decided to work together,” Ojo said, adding that as long as Ebola is present elsewhere, Nigeria remains at risk of reinfection.

“If Ebola could find its way into the US, then Nigeria is still a target even though we may have successfully controlled the outbreak, we cannot say we are totally safe when Ebola is still killing many elsewhere. Nigerians travel a lot and citizens of other countries travel here as well,” said Ojo.

Instead of celebrating, Chris Alagboso, social media manager at HealthNewsNG.com, a major Nigerian health news platform said the goal should be to put infrastructure, structure and logistics in place to ensure that there wasn’t a second outbreak of the virus.

“Nigerian government should look more closely at what happens at the borders with neighboring countries. Furthermore, health inspectors should be deployed for more sensitization and awareness. We see lots of traffic on our site for posts on the prevention of Ebola; so many people who don’t come online would also need such information,”  Alagboso said.

John Nwachukwu, a virologist at the department of human virology, University College Hospital Ibadan, said to intensifying control efforts, medical researchers should be studying how victims of Ebola survived the disease.

“This could give us a clue and probably open the real frontier for Ebola prevention, treatment, management and control. We should be analyzing their blood components, their genetic makeup and body system for similarities and uniqueness. This is an opportunity for great medical researches considering the fact that the nation has the highest Ebola virus disease survival rate in the world,” he said.