Opinion: 5 Things Nigeria Must Do To #KeepNigeriaEbolaFree [Read More]

Nigeria is Ebola-free!

That’s something to be proud of. But it doesn’t end there. We also want to ensure that we remain Ebola-free. Here are five things we need to do.

Before we go into the five, though, we need to remember that we Nigerians must continue to empathise with our neighbouring countries still battling Ebola. We have had our own Ebola experience, and our victory is a victory for them too, because if we did it, they know they can also. Besides that, Nigeria must celebrate being Ebola-free for the sake of those who did everything to make this day possible. We must not forget that we lost lives, we marched in the rain, we moved in unison as a country. Now we will celebrate in style. But we will also remind ourselves what we have learnt from all of this that we can scale to other national challenges, and how much work remains.

And we must also remind ourselves that it is not over until it is over. And until it is indeed over, here are five things we need to maintain.

1. Prompt Reporting

The Nigerian Ebola surveillance protocol is highly dependent on information. We have over 110 million active mobile subscribers and 54 million internet subscribers and widespread distribution of public and private primary healthcare centres nationwide. That is a huge amount of potential reporters.

If we will remain Ebola-free, any suspicion of Ebola, whether by individuals or health facilities, must be immediately reported to health authorities.

The reporting channels are:

Health facility: Any health facility near you (especially government-owned)
Mobile toll-free hotline: 0800-32652-4357 (0800-EBOLA-HELP)
Social Media: Twitter (@EbolaAlert), Facebook.com/EbolaAlert
Web: Livechat on EbolaAlert.org

2. High Environmental and Personal Hygiene StandardsEbola is a largely hygiene challenge, all the way from the source (fruit bats and monkey meats) to human-to-human transmission. To keep Nigeria Ebola-free, we need to sustain proper cooking of our food. Ebola is not the only infectious disease contracted through badly cooked food; typhoid, hookworm, cholera all can be prevented when our food are properly cooked with clean hands. Proper hand hygiene is all that is necessary to prevent many deadly infections: by handwashing, and where this is not feasible, by alcohol hand rubs (sanitizers).

Maintaing sound environmental hygiene is indeed a reflection of our personal hygiene standards too. We must ensure that our personal and public spaces, are always sanitized and frequently decontaminated. Our homes, schools, offices, eateries, cinemas, churches, mosques, hospitals, public toilets are spaces that come together to make our lives convenient and beautiful; they are also points of potential infection when not properly cared for. We must make sure they do not become problems to us. Whoever owns or is responsible for those spaces must do everything possible to ensure that appropriate materials and personnel required to achieve excellent environment hygiene are deployed to those places.

3. High Index of Suspicion for Ebola

We know now how lucky we were that the late Patrick Sawyer was identified early at First Consultant Hospital. This is why we immortalize the late Dr Adadevoh, and why we remain grateful to the entire team at First Consultant: not only for their great sacrifice, but also for suspecting and reporting the case as early as they did.

We need our healthcare providers to retain the same, if not higher, level of suspicion. We at Ebola Alert have developed a basic web application to guide you through Ebola case definition protocol, which you can find in the resources segment of the website at check.EbolaAlert.org

A basic history is all we need to identify most Ebola suspect cases that present to health facilities; so they can be reported early, spread of Ebola can be prevented, and chance of survival for affected persons increased.

In addition, ensure universal standard infection prevention control. Remember that clinical care requires us to guard ourselves and our patients from infectious diseases.

Clinicians can help #KeepNigeriaEbolaFree if they remain extremely vigilant and #StayEbolaAlert.

4. Sustained Government Collaboration

The Nigerian collaboration towards containing Ebola was a collective effort at all levels of government: federal, state, local governments and MDAs. Beside the health sector, the agriculture, technology, works and education sectors played key roles.

Ebola gave to us the opportunity to implement the Adelaide Statement on Health in All Policies, which highlights an inter-ministerial and inter-departmental approach to health. Health is our collective effort and as was evident in the Nigerian Ebola outbreak, the collective effort of federal, state and local governments can do great things.

To #KeepNigeriaEbolaFree, we as a country must do everything to facilitate and sustain that healthy collaboration. Health is too crucial and resource-intense for us to leave our coordination to chance. This is partly why our healthcare system in Nigeria is structured to accommodate clear roles for a disease like Ebola. Now we need all actors at all levels of government to continue working together. We must also sustain this health sector awakening in tackling other disease burdens Nigeria is battling with.

• Sustained Community Action and Participation

We can only #KeepNigeriaEbolaFree, when we accept that our country and government need our participation to succeed. Community action is about individuals and communities getting actively involved in the decision-making process, especially where those decisions will affect their lives.

The role of each individual, family, community and business, becomes more definitive by the day. Nigeria as a rich country needs every one of the 170 million who make up her human capital, individually and in organisations, to be actively involved in all issues concerning her survival.

In the battle against Ebola, we must remember that we did not wait to be told everything; we stepped up and started solving our problems. Ebola Containment Trust Fund rallied organized private sector to raise resources for the containment, Samsung, Tecno, Airtel, Etisalat, MTN, Total, Shell all put our monies where our mouths were. We supported government with information and donations, compliance and volunteering. Those in government worked round the clock to determine the right decisions in collaboration with our development partners. We worked as a country! Families complied, churches and mosques preached, transporters called for directives and implemented it, airlines changed protocols, travelers waited extra hours. That is how health gains are made.

To sustain this new height and #KeepNigeriaEbolaFree, we must not lose our hold of these five things, and we shall see our country remain safer and healthier for it.

To greater heights!

Lawal Bakare is a dentist and team lead at Ebola Alert. He is currently working on deepening the narrative for improved and appropriate utilization of healthcare services in developing countries. He is the founder of HEIT Solutions, a health promotions company driven by design thinking based in Lagos Nigeria.