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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