Alhassan: Nigeria ready for any Ebola outbreak

Nigeria has developed a national Ebola preparedness plan with all elements to work with states governments to activate their incident management systems and to strengthen the country’s preparedness to respond to a potential outbreak of Ebola again, Khaliru Alhassan, the supervising minister of health, said on Thursday.

Speaking at a media briefing in Abuja, Alhassan disclosed that government was immediately setting up a National Emergency Operations Centre for the coordination of activities relating to Ebola prevention and control, adding that country was ready for an outbreak of the deadly virus.

He also stated the significance of the World Health Organisation’s declaration of Nigeria as an Ebola-free country on Monday.

“The significance of this declaration for Nigeria connotes that our strategies to fight this outbreak had worked. The WHO described it as a spectacular world-class epidemiological detective work that should be emulated by other countries,” Alhassan said.

“Nigeria is now not listed among countries infected by this deadly virus any longer, at least for now. No country shall stigmatise any Nigerian as someone coming to contaminate their people.

“Our National public system is working, showcasing how the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control steered these response activities.

“We must now pay for being successful by sharing our experience with other countries of the world and immediately deploy our experts to the ravaged West African countries, and any other that requests them.”

He further disclosed that 506 Nigerian health volunteers would be deployed to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to help in the fight against Ebola.

“It is important that I inform you all that we have identified 506 volunteers ready for deployment to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The first contingent of 250 Nigerian experts will be deployed soon,” he said.

“In addition to this, I am happy to announce that the president has approved that our NCDC support these countries to build local capacity of health workers to enhance their response.”