Kaduna State has switched on its infectious disease hospital and pushed Ebola surveillance down to local government level, as Nigeria’s states move to get ahead of an outbreak that has already reached the country.
Main image: DGBN graphic. Photo: CDC/Cynthia Goldsmith / Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The state’s Director of Public Health, Dr Sadique Abubakar, told Punch on Sunday that isolation facilities had been prepared at the infectious disease hospital in Mando, and that drugs, medical supplies and personal protective equipment had been delivered there and to selected secondary hospitals.
No contacts in Kaduna, officials say
Abubakar said Kaduna had just completed a readiness assessment for an Ebola response, designed to find gaps and tighten coordination before any case appears.
On contact tracing, he said the index case had been moved out of the country and that contacts were being closely monitored by the relevant authorities. “There are no contacts here in Kaduna,” he said.
Rapid response teams and surveillance officers are now working across local government areas, and primary healthcare centres – often a patient’s first stop – are being brought into the effort.
A warning to health workers
Abubakar stressed that early Ebola symptoms, especially fever, can look like malaria. He urged health workers to keep “a high index of suspicion” and to stick strictly to infection control: gloves, handwashing and proper hygiene.
He asked residents not to panic, to stay informed and to cooperate with public health officials, while the state continues community awareness campaigns on radio and television.
The national picture
Nigeria confirmed its first case of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola on 20 October, in a traveller who arrived in Abuja from Uganda. On Saturday the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reported two suspected cases in the North-East, both isolated with laboratory results pending. There is no licensed vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain.
The wider outbreak is centred on the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has become the deadliest in the country’s history, and has also reached Uganda and Kenya.
Why it matters
Nigeria stopped its 2014 Ebola outbreak in about three months, a response still cited as a model. That success rested on fast isolation, contact tracing and alert frontline workers – exactly what states such as Kaduna say they are now putting in place. With heavy travel between Nigeria and diaspora communities in the UK, US and beyond, how well that preparation holds matters far beyond the North.