The federal government yesterday said Nigerian health professionals have
volunteered to assist countries ravaged by the deadly Ebola Virus
Disease. The federal government also said it has donated N24 million To
three countries ravaged by the EVD as part of efforts to end the EVD in
the West African region. The countries affected with the deadly virus in
West Africa are Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone...
The Federal government also said it had approved funds for field
laboratory training programmes for a minimum of five health workers each
from the three countries.The minister stated this yesterday in Abuja
when the south-east and south-south Professional association paid him a
visit. He said no country is safe until the Ebola Virus is defeated.He
said, “Presently Nigeria as a country does not have any case of Ebola
and currently Ebola virus is in five countries in the world now, with
cases of Ebola in countries like United States of America, Guinea,
Liberia Sierra-Leone and Congo. “And, as part of the Nigerian leadership
role in Africa, Mr. President has announced and has already effected
the donation of half of a million dollars to each of those three
countries to fight the disease.“What was very instructive was that
Nigeria made that donation when we don’t have a single case, it was not
as if we did it because we had Ebola; we did not even have any case of
Ebola…Let me tell you no other country has done it the way Nigeria had
done it. So, everybody is coming to learn from us and we are willing to
give that technical support to other countries.”Earlier, the President
of South-East/South-South Professional Association, Mr. Emeka Ugwu-Oju,
had commended the Federal Government for the landmark breakthrough
recorded in the fight against the Ebola virus.
His said, “If all the challenges are being handled the way and manner
the disease is handled, I believe in very possible shortest time,
Nigeria will be among the top 20 economies in the world.”He urged the
minister not to relent in his efforts toward fighting the disease in
other Africa countries.Ebola virus disease, which has claimed over 3,338
lives in West Africa including 8 Nigerians, was imported into the
country by the Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer in July this
year.Meanwhile, the threat of hunger is tracking Ebola across affected
West African nations as the disease kills farmers and their families,
drives workers from the fields and creates food shortages.In the
worst-hit states of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Ebola is ravaging
their food-producing ‘breadbasket’ regions, preventing planting and
harvesting, and disrupting supply routes and markets, Reuters said
yesterday.“Hunger will kill us where Ebola failed,” said Pa Sorie, a
61-year-old rice and cassava farmer in Port Loko in northern Sierra
Leone. A father of six with four grandchildren, he says he has already
lost three close relatives to Ebola.The U.N.’s World Food Programme and
Food and Agriculture Organisation say border and market closures,
quarantines and movement restrictions, and widespread fear of Ebola have
led to food scarcity, panic buying and price increases, especially in
Sierra Leone and Liberia.
As governments from the United States to China and Cuba send troops and
medics to the affected corner of Africa in an attempt to contain the
epidemic, relief agencies are scrambling to ward off the humanitarian
crisis threatening hundreds of thousands along with the health
disaster.“The country will starve,”warned Mary Hawa John-Sao, vice
president of Sierra Leone’s National Farmers’ Federation and an
award-winning grower. Her own fields were lying unattended and spoiling
in quarantined Kailahun district, which along with neighbouring Kenema
in the east and Port Loko and Bombali in the north are the country’s
traditional food-growing areas.John-Sao, 55, said 75% of those killed by
Ebola in Kailahun and Kenema were farmers and hunger was “imminent”.The
World Food Programme is trying to provide food to around one million
people in the three worst affected countries.As of September 14, it had
distributed 3,300 tons of food to more than 180,000 people in the three
nations in a race against hunger.
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