The Minister of State and supervising Minister of Health, Dr. Khaliru Alhassan, has ascribed Nigeria’s success in containing the Ebola Virus Disease to responsive governance driven by appropriate political will, a clear leadership role, and strong multi-sectoral teamwork.
The Minister stated this when he addressed journalists during the 64th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa, holding in Cotonou, the capital of the Republic of Benin from 3rd to 7th November 2014.
The Minister emphasized that Nigeria’s President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who promptly declared the Ebola outbreak as a Public Health Emergency, provided robust political leadership and quickly convened a Presidential Summit on Ebola comprising of all State Governors and their Commissioners for Health and the Minister of Health.
He further said that the all-inclusive national response to the Ebola outbreak, through the inauguration of a multi-sectoral Presidential Committee on Communication Strategy for Ebola Virus Disease prevention and Containment to drive the national communication response to the outbreak was crucial to the nation’s rapid containment of the disease.
The Minister used the opportunity to glowingly praise Nigerian health care personnel who worked at the front line to contain the Ebola Virus Disease, in addition to International Partners and the Nigerian Private Sector Community.
He affirmed that Nigeria was willing to share its experiences and offer support to other countries in terms of building necessary capacity, management of information and actual case management in their efforts to contain the Ebola Virus Disease.
The Minster informed the journalists that Nigeria has already mobilized and trained over six hundred health workers as volunteers to support the containment effort in affected countries within the region under the leadership of ECOWAS, while noting that Nigeria’s President had donated $3.5million towards the Ebola scourge in the sub region. He also disclosed that at the request of the Government of Sierra Leone, Nigeria made a donation of drugs and supplies to the tune of N50 million.
