August 20, 2014
People are gathered, but they are avoiding as much body contact as possible. Worry is etched all over their faces as they speak in hushed tones. Their focus is on the national dailies conspicuously displayed at a vendor’s stand. Usually, each one of them would have picked up a newspaper to read for a fee. Today, everyone is afraid to touch the papers. The vendor is equally scared of receiving money from all these customers. Anyone of them might have had contact with an Ebola patient.
A shrill voice emanates from across the road over the drone of traffic. It is the voice of a young teenage male calling out to people to buy hand sanitizer. The sanitizer is expensive and its authenticity is in doubt, but people rush to buy it all the same, some buying as many as five bottles. His wares finish in twenty minutes.
It has been over a year since Nigeria was threatened with an Ebola epidemic that ravaged parts of West Africa. The Ebola virus killed more than 9,000 people – about 2,000 in Guinea, 3,000 in Sierra Leone and 4,000 in Liberia. The outbreak started in Guinea in December 2013, but the Ebola crisis really started in April 2014 when it began to spread. We had our own share of casualties too. The most notable of them all was Dr Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, who is credited as being the person that ensured that the infamous primary carrier, Patrick Sawyer, did not go about spreading the disease to other parts of the densely populated Lagos. A real heroine, I must say. She refused to succumb to pressure from high-level diplomats to get him released. Nigeria will always be indebted to this great woman.
Ebola was nipped in the bud before it got a chance to ravage many communities. The disease was brought into the country on July 20 by Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American financial consultant. Sawyer initially denied exposure to Ebola. He was treated for presumed malaria after suffering from a fever, vomiting and diarrhoea.
Sawyer died five days after his arrival. By then he had triggered a line of exposure. By September, 20 people had been infected. Twelve of whom were in Lagos state and eight in Rivers state. Seven more subsequently died. In the week that Sawyer was diagnosed, an emergency operation centre was set up. At its core was the system Nigeria had developed for its war against polio and lead poisoning. The deputy manager of the polio campaign was brought in to head the Ebola response team and operations were rapidly scaled up.
You need to have seen the way many communities in Liberia and Sierra Leone became ghost towns with corpses littering the streets. The sick and dying completely overwhelmed the enormously strained health facilities.
It took months of hardship, sorrow, blood and tears before the other countries afflicted with the Ebola virus were able to pull through to eradicate the virus. The deaths and the resultant socio-economic implications were devastating, but it would be a real tragedy if we did not learn a thing from the whole episode.
I often wonder that if Ebola were to spring up again, would the response of all necessary agencies be better, the same, or even worse than the last time.
What is the level of preparedness of our medical institutions to handle crises such as these? How much has gone towards the research of this virus and the procurement of drugs? Have we learnt from the past, or would we go cap in hand begging the Western nations if Ebola were to strike again? Can we elicit a swift response to contain highly communicable and infectious diseases whenever they break out?
Ebola ravaged communities in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea because these countries lacked the public health infrastructure to identify and contain it. Nongovernmental organizations had been trying to help address health problems in the region, but much of their effort seemed geared to what would appeal to donors and supporters. Many organizations focused on a single illness without deeply addressing the underlying problem that allows all of these diseases to spread.
Prediction, or at the very least understanding, of possible threats should be a key goal of future risk reduction strategies, to ensure we prevent another outbreak. For infectious diseases, prediction rests on strong disease surveillance in both human and animal populations.
The main international treaty underpinning health security, the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR 2005), requires the 195 member states of the WHO to have in place “core capacity requirements for surveillance and response to events.”
Less than one-third of the WHO member states have declared their compliance with IHR 2005. Efforts to help poorer nations to achieve this have not been forthcoming.
Apart from adequate disease surveillance, how have we developed our research facilities, or have we forgotten so soon? We shouldn’t leave it up to the developed countries to research for prevention and cure. Many professionals would have loved to go into this field, but for inadequate funding. The government should channel more funds into medical research that borders on disease prevention and cure.
Another cause for concern is the training of our medical personnel. We were lucky during the last Ebola epidemic because we had the personnel that handled the Wild Polio virus outbreak on standby. Relevant health authorities should undergo continuous training to know how to handle specific kinds of disease outbreak.
The state of our medical facilities is also called into question. Patrick Sawyer was a high level diplomat; hence, he was taken to a private hospital and had his own private ward. If he was taken to any of the General Hospitals, what would have happened next is only best imagined.
There is so much rot in the health sector. There is no plausible reason why our nationals should be seeking healthcare abroad. We have produced some of the best doctors in the world but they are forced to seek greener pastures elsewhere because the motivation is not just there. The equipment isn’t there. Doctors are being forced to improvise all the time. At times, hospital workers aren’t paid regularly. Situations like this don’t allow us to get the best of the medical sector.
Because of the paucity of funds, doctors are forced to cater to the rich only, completely ignoring the poor. It is this phenomenon that has made hospitals to rent out their ambulances for the purpose of carrying corpses to burial ceremonies, instead of their original purpose of rushing sick or wounded people to the hospitals. This needs to be curbed.
Learning from our past mistakes is the only way we can avoid repeat performances in the future. Health is indeed wealth. We owe it to ourselves and our future generations to revamp the health sector. Otherwise, Dr Adadevoh’s death will have been in vain.
People are gathered, but they are avoiding as much body contact as possible. Worry is etched all over their faces as they speak in hushed tones. Their focus is on the national dailies conspicuously displayed at a vendor’s stand. Usually, each one of them would have picked up a newspaper to read for a fee. Today, everyone is afraid to touch the papers. The vendor is equally scared of receiving money from all these customers. Anyone of them might have had contact with an Ebola patient.
A shrill voice emanates from across the road over the drone of traffic. It is the voice of a young teenage male calling out to people to buy hand sanitizer. The sanitizer is expensive and its authenticity is in doubt, but people rush to buy it all the same, some buying as many as five bottles. His wares finish in twenty minutes.
It has been over a year since Nigeria was threatened with an Ebola epidemic that ravaged parts of West Africa. The Ebola virus killed more than 9,000 people – about 2,000 in Guinea, 3,000 in Sierra Leone and 4,000 in Liberia. The outbreak started in Guinea in December 2013, but the Ebola crisis really started in April 2014 when it began to spread. We had our own share of casualties too. The most notable of them all was Dr Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, who is credited as being the person that ensured that the infamous primary carrier, Patrick Sawyer, did not go about spreading the disease to other parts of the densely populated Lagos. A real heroine, I must say. She refused to succumb to pressure from high-level diplomats to get him released. Nigeria will always be indebted to this great woman.
Ebola was nipped in the bud before it got a chance to ravage many communities. The disease was brought into the country on July 20 by Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American financial consultant. Sawyer initially denied exposure to Ebola. He was treated for presumed malaria after suffering from a fever, vomiting and diarrhoea.
Sawyer died five days after his arrival. By then he had triggered a line of exposure. By September, 20 people had been infected. Twelve of whom were in Lagos state and eight in Rivers state. Seven more subsequently died. In the week that Sawyer was diagnosed, an emergency operation centre was set up. At its core was the system Nigeria had developed for its war against polio and lead poisoning. The deputy manager of the polio campaign was brought in to head the Ebola response team and operations were rapidly scaled up.
You need to have seen the way many communities in Liberia and Sierra Leone became ghost towns with corpses littering the streets. The sick and dying completely overwhelmed the enormously strained health facilities.
It took months of hardship, sorrow, blood and tears before the other countries afflicted with the Ebola virus were able to pull through to eradicate the virus. The deaths and the resultant socio-economic implications were devastating, but it would be a real tragedy if we did not learn a thing from the whole episode.
I often wonder that if Ebola were to spring up again, would the response of all necessary agencies be better, the same, or even worse than the last time.
What is the level of preparedness of our medical institutions to handle crises such as these? How much has gone towards the research of this virus and the procurement of drugs? Have we learnt from the past, or would we go cap in hand begging the Western nations if Ebola were to strike again? Can we elicit a swift response to contain highly communicable and infectious diseases whenever they break out?
Ebola ravaged communities in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea because these countries lacked the public health infrastructure to identify and contain it. Nongovernmental organizations had been trying to help address health problems in the region, but much of their effort seemed geared to what would appeal to donors and supporters. Many organizations focused on a single illness without deeply addressing the underlying problem that allows all of these diseases to spread.
Prediction, or at the very least understanding, of possible threats should be a key goal of future risk reduction strategies, to ensure we prevent another outbreak. For infectious diseases, prediction rests on strong disease surveillance in both human and animal populations.
The main international treaty underpinning health security, the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR 2005), requires the 195 member states of the WHO to have in place “core capacity requirements for surveillance and response to events.”
Less than one-third of the WHO member states have declared their compliance with IHR 2005. Efforts to help poorer nations to achieve this have not been forthcoming.
Apart from adequate disease surveillance, how have we developed our research facilities, or have we forgotten so soon? We shouldn’t leave it up to the developed countries to research for prevention and cure. Many professionals would have loved to go into this field, but for inadequate funding. The government should channel more funds into medical research that borders on disease prevention and cure.
Another cause for concern is the training of our medical personnel. We were lucky during the last Ebola epidemic because we had the personnel that handled the Wild Polio virus outbreak on standby. Relevant health authorities should undergo continuous training to know how to handle specific kinds of disease outbreak.
The state of our medical facilities is also called into question. Patrick Sawyer was a high level diplomat; hence, he was taken to a private hospital and had his own private ward. If he was taken to any of the General Hospitals, what would have happened next is only best imagined.
There is so much rot in the health sector. There is no plausible reason why our nationals should be seeking healthcare abroad. We have produced some of the best doctors in the world but they are forced to seek greener pastures elsewhere because the motivation is not just there. The equipment isn’t there. Doctors are being forced to improvise all the time. At times, hospital workers aren’t paid regularly. Situations like this don’t allow us to get the best of the medical sector.
Because of the paucity of funds, doctors are forced to cater to the rich only, completely ignoring the poor. It is this phenomenon that has made hospitals to rent out their ambulances for the purpose of carrying corpses to burial ceremonies, instead of their original purpose of rushing sick or wounded people to the hospitals. This needs to be curbed.
Learning from our past mistakes is the only way we can avoid repeat performances in the future. Health is indeed wealth. We owe it to ourselves and our future generations to revamp the health sector. Otherwise, Dr Adadevoh’s death will have been in vain.
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