FG sets up presidential taskforce to forestall Ebola outbreak

In a proactive move to halt the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Nigeria, the Federal Government on Thursday inaugurated a presidential taskforce on Ebola virus disease preparedness.

Chief of Staff to the President, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila, said the task force was set up as a determined measure by the present administration to forestall the outbreak of the deadly disease.

He said: “We did the inauguration today on the preparedness of Nigeria for the Ebola virus disease. We’ve covered a lot of ground. Right now, there’s no case reported, and that’s good news, and that’s why all hands have to be on deck to make sure that the measures we are taking are preventive and not curative.

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“We don’t want to be in the situation we were last time, where we had a carrier in the country, and we’re all running helter-skelter.”

The Chief of Staff, who revealed that several subcommittees have been put in place to take care of critical areas of preparedness, including surveillance, border control, immigration management, and emergency response, told newsmen that there is collaboration with states hosting international airports to prevent the virus from entering the country.

He also disclosed that attention would be given to land borders, which he noted are informal migration routes.

He said: “Normally, when people talk about emergency preparedness and cross-border diseases such as this, they think about airports. But now we’re covering not just the airports; we’re putting a lot of emphasis on land borders.

“We have a lot of cross-migration through the land borders, and the Border Control Development Agency is involved, immigration is involved, and a lot of the border communities are involved.”

The Chief of Staff, who acknowledged the efforts of the past administration to effectively curtail the virus outbreak in 2014, said the present administration was fully determined to avoid gaps.

“What we want is a zero case, as we have now. We want to maintain a zero case.”

Also speaking with State House correspondents, Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), Dr. Jide Idris, declared that Nigeria has no recorded incidence; however maintained that surveillance becomes compelling given developments in certain countries in Africa.

“The focus is to be prepared. We don’t have any Ebola cases here now, but we need to be prepared. We need to ensure that we don’t get the Ebola virus here.

“However, just in case one slips in, we want to be prepared nationally to identify and deal with the case.

“The bottom line is that we do not allow Ebola to come in. If it does come in, we are prepared to rapidly identify and manage the case nationally.“