The supervising Minister of Health, Dr KhaliruAlhassan who launched the scheme that includes operational vehicles in Abuja said all hands must be on deck to ensure Nigeria do not return to abyss of the deadly Ebola virus disease.
Alhassan said: "As you are aware, following successful collaboration among the Federal Ministry of Health and the Governments of Lagos, Rivers and Enugu States, Nigeria was able to halt the spread of EVD. With a case fatality of 36.8 per cent, and the time taken to contain Ebola, ours has been one of the most successful responses to EVD containment in history.
"However, while we are happy with our achievements, we are not oblivious of the fact that for as long as Ebola is still ravaging our brothers and sisters in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, it remains a threat to us. Coupled with the lesson we have learned so far, that you do not wait for emergencies/disease outbreaks to occur before you plan your response, we have agreed to continue to progressively invest in disease surveillance, preparedness and response. Above all to ensure that we secure our various ports of entry.”
He added: "At the federal level, we remain committed to support the states to establish isolation centres and pre-position some of the materials required to begin to respond to outbreaks like that of the EVD. Furthermore, we are going ahead with our efforts to strengthen a number of reference laboratories spread across the six geographical regions to facilitate diagnosis of diseases. The EVD outbreak has also reinforced the need to strengthen the infection prevention and control practices as well as research in the country.
"As such, through the advice of the Treatment Research Group, which was inaugurated to guide the Ministry on research into preventive and curative treatments for EVD, we are also preparing to begin clinical trials on some candidate EVD vaccines. In this regard and it is our commitment to work together with all stakeholders to ensure that these studies are conducted in ways that are ethical, ensuring maximum possible protection for the research participants and their communities accordingly.
"We are here today to launch these vehicles to support surveillance and emergency preparedness and response activities. The vehicles shall be stationed at some of our key ports of entry and also used to communicate between operations centres and surveillance offices within and across states.
"I wish to call on all our state governments to also take a leaf from our work at the federal level to continue to strengthen their surveillance and outbreak preparedness and responses to ensure that no room is given to Ebola to return to Nigeria and that in the event of any other emergency or disease outbreak, we would be prepared to respond and curtail its impact even better than we have done with the EVD.”
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