The World Health Organisation is preparing to
announce that Nigeria has not had a confirmed case of Ebola for 42 days – or
two incubation periods of 21 days – just as it did for Senegal on Friday.
WHO on Friday declared Senegal free of Ebola
after 42 days passed without a new confirmed case.
“WHO officially declares the Ebola outbreak in
Senegal over and commends the country on its diligence to end the transmission
of the virus,” the UN health agency had said in a statement.
The benchmark of 42 days is twice the maximum
incubation period for the disease. Continue....
The Nigeria’s achievement is coming amid global
fight against the disease that has continued to ravage West African countries
of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. There are also mounting fears around the world
of EVD becoming a global plague. Already, the disease has claimed the life of a
victim in the United States of America.
The disease has claimed more than 4,500 lives
this year.
Close attention is being paid to how Nigeria,
with an under-funded and ill-equipped health system, managed to contain the
virus, as specialists look for a more effective response to control the EVD
spread.
But there were warnings against any premature
celebration, with complacency still a risk and luck considered to have played a
part in containing the outbreak.
Eight people died out of 20 confirmed Ebola cases
in Nigeria, with all infections traced back to the index case, the
Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, who arrived in Lagos on July 20.
Many feared the worst when Sawyer died on July 25
in a private hospital in Lagos.
Doctors were on strike at the time the EVD case
occurred over pay and conditions in the public health sector; and many state
hospitals lack running water, let alone soap and other basic equipment.
Yet the doomsday scenario of rapid spread among
the populace did not materialise.
“Nigeria acted quickly and early and on a large
scale,” the Agence France-Presse quoted the US Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention official, John Vertefeuille, as saying.
“They acted aggressively, especially in terms of
contact-tracing,” Vertefeuille told AFP.
Key to the response was an existing plan for a
mass outbreak of polio, which was adapted to Ebola, as well as a rapid appeal
for foreign help.
The Ebola Emergency Operations Centre prioritised
contact-tracing and twice-daily monitoring of those at risk, with experts aware
that every Ebola case was in contact with about 50 people.
In all, nearly 900 people were monitored in Lagos
and Port Harcourt in Rivers State, where one contact of Sawyer, an ECOWAS
protocol official, Ibukun Olu-Koye, travelled after slipping surveillance. The
ECOWAS official, curiously, was treated in an hotel room by Dr. Iyke Enemuo.
While Olu-Koye survived the disease, Enemuo died of same.
Some 1,800 people were trained to trace and
monitor those at risk, as well as decontaminate infected places and care for
the sick, said the head of the EEOC, Faisal Shuaib.
Luck cannot be discounted in Nigeria’s first
brush with Ebola. Sawyer was taken straight to hospital after arriving from
Monrovia visibly ill, keeping him off Lagos’ teeming streets.
The late Dr. Stella Adedavoh, who treated Sawyer
had also prevented him from discharging himself.
Public health campaigns, including a giant
electronic billboard warning about Ebola just outside the hospital where Sawyer
died, have helped raise awareness.
Airports and seaports have introduced compulsory
screening on arrival and departure; temperature checks and hand sanitiser use
for the public are now the norm.
Greater knowledge about Ebola is likely to help
in reporting any new cases, an epidemiologist who runs the Nigeria Health
Watch website, Chukwe Ihekweazu, said.
But he warned Nigeria against celebrating its
Ebola-free status.
“It’s premature when you see the situation in
West Africa right now. There is still a lot to do. It is not the right time to
celebrate,” he said.
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