Health Minister Briefs Nigerian Lawmakers On Ebola

West Africa is experiencing the worst Ebola outbreak in history and unfortunately it has crept into Nigeria through a Liberian Patrick Sawyer, but swiftly the Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, has declared a national emergency on the control and containment of the Ebola virus in Nigeria.

A 1.9 billion Naira fund has also been approved by the President to contain the situation and check the spread of the disease.

Two deaths have been recorded so far in Nigeria as a result of the Ebola Virus.

During the week, the House of Representatives Committee on Health held an emergency meeting with the Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu and government health officials

While briefing reporters on the Ebola Virus outbreak on Wednesday, August 6, Professor Chukwu confirmed the death of a Nigerian nurse, one of the caregivers to the Liberian victim, Patrick Sawyer and on the same day, he declared the Ebola outbreak in the country a ‘national emergency’.

The House Committee on Health called an emergency meeting with the health officials to find out how many Nigerians were affected by Ebola and what was being done to halt a possible spread of the virus.

Part of the details given by the Minister to the committee led by Ndudi Elumelu was that Mr Patrick Sawyer – the man credited with bringing Ebola virus disease into Nigeria – ‘knew he was sick’ with the virus before entering Nigeria.

Also briefing the lawmakers at the emergency meeting, the project director at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Professor Abdulsalami Nasidi, said that 70 Nigerians were currently under surveillance for the diseases, being people who were confirmed to have come in contact with the index Ebola victim, Mr Sawyer.

“The experience we have  from what is happening in other West African countries, is that 70 to 80 per cent of transmission have occurred during burials,” he said, listing the contacts already under surveillance

Dousing any possible spread of anxiety on the matter, the Director of Port Health Services in the Health Ministry, Dr Sani Gwarzo, said restrictions had been placed on the repatriation of corpses of Nigerians abroad into the country during this period of Ebola scare. He said additional personnel were required to screen travellers at the country’s entry points, apparently emphasising the need for medical workers that have been on strike since July 1 to end the industrial action and assist the government in reducing the risk of possible spread of the virus.

Some of the issues disputed by the health team was the purported curative powers of bitter kola on Ebola, a claim reported to have been propagated by Professor Maurice Iwu. The Health Minister said that no evidence showed that bitter kola will prevent or cure Ebola, stressing that Professor Iwu’s experiment was inconclusive.