Ebola: Nigerian schools to re-open in two weeks

All Nigerian primary and secondary schools ─ both public and private ─ will be allowed to resume academic activities by the middle of September.

Federal government had recently ordered schools not to resume from their holidays because of the Ebola outbreak.

But health minister, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, said on Wednesday that medical experts have now given the go-ahead for school resumption after assessing the risks and the containment of the deadly disease.

He said the minister of education, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, will hold an emergency meeting with commissioners of education to announce a resumption date after a review of the school calendar.

Chukwu said only two people were currently undergoing treatment for Ebola disease in the country ─ the wife of the Dr. Samuel Emenuo, who died in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, as well as his sister.

They are currently in isolation centers in Lagos and Port Harcourt respectively.

He said there are 296 contacts under surveillance ─ 255 in Port Harcourt and 41 in Lagos ─ while Enugu is completely free after the initial scare.

Chukwu refuted reports that 60 Ebola contacts were missing in Port Harcourt.

Rumours of the cases in Abuja and Calabar are also untrue, he said, while the suspected case at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State, is yet to be confirmed.

Meanwhile, Nigeria is considering taking action against Olu-Ibukun Koye, a Nigerian diplomat with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) who escaped surveillance in Lagos and took the disease to Port Harcourt.

He had been in contact with Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who brought Ebola to Nigeria.

“Presently, he doesn’t have the virus in his blood now so he cannot infect other people, but he has high antibodies which is just showing that he had the disease.

“He is part of the 18 cases that have been confirmed in Nigeria. He is with us in Lagos, not in isolation because he is not sick anymore but because of his abhorrent behaviour, we needed to be sure that there is nothing further that can prove risky to society,” Chukwu said.

He said the government was looking at possible areas in taking action against the diplomat.

“We are looking at possible areas. One, we are asking the ministry of foreign affairs, since he is working for a diplomatic mission, to advise us. Secondly, we also need to look at our laws. What currently our quarantine law provides is too old, it came from the colonial period and I do know that in the national assembly there are attempts currently to see how to amend that law and make it to be up-to-date,” he said.