WHO: Nigeria’s Ebola Outbreak Is Officially Over
WHO: Nigeria’s Ebola Outbreak Is Officially Over – Nigeria is free of Ebola, the World Health Organization declared Monday a rare victory in the months-long battle against the fatal disease.
WHO’s director for Nigeria, Rui Gama Vaz, told a news conference in the capital, Abuja, that Nigeria’s containment of Ebola is a “spectacular success story.” The disease came to Lagos, Africa’s most populous city, through an airline passenger who had carried Ebola from Liberia to Nigeria.
The WHO said in a statement, the July 23 announcement about the disease hitting Nigeria “rocked public health communities all around the world.”
What made this feat possible was the great coordination between state and federal health officials, the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Nigeria was able to set up isolation wards immediately and, later, designated Ebola treatment centers. Health officials reached every single known person to have had contact with infected people in Lagos and 99.8 percent in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil capital where the disease was carried by an infected Nigerian diplomat.
Nigeria had 20 cases of Ebola and eight deaths, including two doctors and a nurse.
“The outbreak in Nigeria has been contained,” Vaz said. “But we must be clear that we only won a battle. The war will only end when West Africa is also declared free of Ebola.”
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