The Nigeria Federal Executive Council (FEC) has instructed the Federal Ministry of Health to step up emergency surveillance activities at all land and airport borders in the country, towards keeping Nigerians safe from the latest Ebola Epidemic which is currently ravaging Democratic Republic of Congo.
Minister of Health, Isaac Adewale, while addressing newsmen on Wednesday after the FEC meeting said, the government is greatly concerned about the fresh outbreak of Ebola virus in Congo, and that over the last one month, DRC recorded 19 suspected cases of viral hemorrhagic fever out of which 16 of those cases resulted to deaths.
“On Monday, blood samples from five patients in the DRC, particularly in a particular district in DRC, two of the five cases, Ebola was actually confirmed.
“FEC has now directed the Federal Ministry of help to step up emergency surveillance activities at all land and airport borders so that we can actually keep Nigerians safe,” Adewale said.
The minister added that an emergency operation centre is going to be set up to thoroughly screen visitors especially those from Congo.
“What we will do is to set up an emergency operation centre which will be chaired by Dr Babasanya, who actually led our efforts in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Guinea during the outbreak in 2014.
“Not only that, we will be screening incoming passengers, particularly passengers from DRC and neighbouring countries. We will also ensure we step up all activities screening people coming in so that we will not be caught unawares,” he added.
The FEC also agreed that Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) will consider sending some team to DRC as part of building capacity for managing the outbreak.
This recent outbreak is DRC’s ninth known outbreak of Ebola since 1976 when the deadly viral disease was first identified in then-Zaire by a Belgian-led team.
