BREAKING THE SILENCE, 2014 Breaking The Silence | Page 29

Now That We Are Ebola-Free...
5
Things
Nigeria
Must Do To
# KeepNigeriaEbolaFree
Dr. Lawal Bakare
Team Lead, Ebola Alert
@bakarelawal
Nigeria is Ebola-free!
That's something to be proud of. But
it doesn't end there. We also want to
ensure that we remain Ebola-free.
Here are five things we need to do.
Before we go into the five, though,
we need to remember that we
Nigerians must continue to
empathise with our neighbouring
countries still battling Ebola. We
have had our own Ebola experience,
and our victory is a victory for them
too, because if we did it, they know
they can also. Besides that, Nigeria
must celebrate being Ebola-free for
the sake of those who did everything
to make this day possible. We must
not forget that we lost lives, we
marched in the rain, we moved in
unison as a country. Now we will
celebrate in style. But we will also
remind ourselves what we have
learnt from all of this is that we can
scale other national challenges, and
how much work remains.
And we must also remind ourselves
that it is not over until it is over.
And until it is indeed over, here are
five things we need to maintain.
1. Prompt Reporting
The Nigerian Ebola surveillance
protocol is highly dependent on
information. We have over 110
million active mobile subscribers and
54 million internet subscribers and
widespread distribution of public and
private primary healthcare centres
nationwide. That is a huge amount
of potential reporters.
If we will remain Ebola-free, any
suspicion of Ebola, whether by
individuals or health facilities, must
be immediately reported to health
AMSUL Digest 2014