The world received with joy, last week, news of the end of the world’s deadliest Ebola fever outbreak which took the lives of 11,000 people and triggered panic across the globe. The World Health Organisation (WHO), gave Liberia, the last bastion of the pandemic, a clean bill of health and proclaimed the Ebola war over.
Although the global health agency has affirmed that there had been ten small flare ups because of the persistence of the virus in survivors, it is gladdening to learn that the gory reports of massive deaths in Liberia and the other seriously affected West African countries will at last come to an end.
The flare up however suggests the need for continuing vigilance to ensure that the virus no longer gets a foothold anywhere in the world or stages a comeback.
The practices which helped to keep the virus at bay in Nigeria and kicked it out of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, which carried the larger share of the Ebola burden, should be continued to ensure that the war against Ebola is finally rested.
Sadly, however, the news of the end of Ebola has come at a time that its equally deadly cousin, (or is it brother), Lassa fever is ravaging Nigeria. As at the end of last week, 43 people had been confirmed to have lost their lives to the illness in ten states in the country. The easy spread of lassa fever is said to be related to the fact that its outbreak was not immediately communicated to the country’s health authorities. This made it possible for the illness to spread to other states. It is only now that the health authorities are tracing and quarantining those who have been in close contact with the victims.
It is important for these people to cooperate with the authorities and ensure that they restrain from acts that could spread the illness. We must be careful not to have a situation like what happened in the three countries most affected by the Ebola fever, in which dead bodies were piling up in the streets. This is the time for the Nigerian health authorities to do all that is necessary to spread the check of lassa fever as they checked that of Ebola.
Here is wishing the minister and the ministries of health success as they tackle the lassa fever onslaught. The All Nigerians, however, have to play their own role by maintaining environmental hygiene and launching a war against rats.
Sadly, all the health practices and widespread use of hand sanitisers in the country during the Ebola pandemic appears to have gone with the end of the disease in the country. This is the time to resuscitate them and avoid contact between rats and food items as rat urine, faeces and the body fluids of infected persons are said to be the main transmitters of this fever,
Nigeria must not move from Ebola pandemic to lassa fever epidemic.
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