Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, on Wednesday 13th August 2014 disclosed that about 198
cases of Ebola virus infections have been recorded in the country.
Out of these, he said, 177. Aresaid to be in Lagos,
while the remaining 21 are in Enugu.
Briefing State House correspondents after the meeting of the Federal
Executive Council (FEC) presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan, Maku
hinted that the weekly parley centered mainly on efforts the country was making
in containing the Ebola disease.
He noted that on the directive of the President, he and his health counterpart,
Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, briefed the council on the progress so far recorded
since the outbreak of the Ebola.
The Minister stated that the first major step the ministry had taken was to
quarantine all those who had primary contacts with Sawyer.
He said: “So far, as the ministry reported this morning, all those who had
primary contacts with the subject had been quarantined which is the way the
global community handles the disease and the secondary contacts have also been
traced.
“There is a strong team in Lagos
which has been set up by the emergency response centre that is tracing every
contact that has been made with either the index case or with primary contacts.
So far the number of people that have been traced is 198. Out of this number,
177 are in Lagos
and they are being traced, some are in quarantine, some are being monitored by
health specialists, with their movements being monitored and they are under
directive from the Ministry of Health.
“So those in quarantine include people who have so far made contacts with index
case or secondary. So 198 of them, 177 in Lagos
and 21 persons in Enugu
are also being watched. This is because one of the nurses that was involved in
the treatment of the index case, unfortunately disobeyed medical instructions
and somehow travelled to Enugu.
We have no problems as all those who had been in contact with her, including
her husband are also under quarantine and so the medical team had been able to
trace all those who made contacts with her.
“Apart from those who made contacts with the late Sawyer, and the secondary
contacts with those who handled his case, there has not been any known case in Nigeria that
has the probability of contracting this virus. Nigeria has responded with the best
international standards that can be imagined.”
He stressed that the disease had not reached the proportion of an epidemic,
noting that so far, only 10 persons had been tested positive, including the
late Sawyer. He said two citizens, one of them being the nurse who handled the
Sawyer and the second one was the protocol officer, who welcomed him at the
airport and helped in conveying him to hospital had died.
Maku said the country had moved in a way that it had not done before, “and
globally the standards we have kept, the efforts we have made, the policies we
have deployed, the measures we have taken surely should give our citizens and
the world at large the confidence that Nigeria is doing everything possible to
contain this virus.
“In addition to this, the Ministry of Health has also been in close touch
with all the state governments. And the governors are receiving continuous
briefings on the measures we have taken and what we should do at the state
level.”
The Minister allayed the fear of the existence of the
virus in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, noting that with the containment
policy already put in place by thee Federal Government, Nigerians had no cause
to be worried.
Source: Daily Post
4 comments:
Hmmm But what is the aim of this nurse
As a health practitioner she would have known better instead of escaping to her state
This is awful..God help us all
father remove this plague from Nigeria oooo in Jesus name.Amen
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