The Federal Government of Nigeria has set up a Presidential Task Force on Ebola Virus Disease Preparedness.
According to government officials, they are taking action early to prevent an outbreak and to avoid a repeat of the 2014 Ebola crisis.
President Bola Tinubu’s chief of staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, inaugurated the task force in Abuja on Thursday.
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 reported case, which is good news, and that’s why all hands have to be on deck to make sure the measures we are taking are preventive, not curative.”
He emphasized that the government wants to be proactive rather than waiting for an outbreak to happen.
“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 group has created special teams to handle different areas, including tracking diseases, managing border control, and coordinating emergency responses.
While previous safety efforts focused mostly on airports, Gbajabiamila explained that the new task force is putting extra focus on monitoring land borders and informal travel routes. He noted that they are now covering more ground because there is a lot of cross-migration through land borders, involving immigration, the Border Control Development Agency, and local border communities.
“What we want is a zero case, as we have now. We want to maintain a zero case.”
Dr. Jide Idris, the Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), confirmed that health checkpoints have already been strengthened at major entry points.
He explained that the new plan links several government ministries and state authorities together to ensure the country does not get the virus.
He stated, “The focus is to be prepared. We don’t have any Ebola case here now, but we need to be prepared. We need to ensure that we don’t get that Ebola virus here. However, just in case one slips in, we want to be prepared nationally to identify and deal with the case.”
