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They must be doing something right. Nigeria has been declared Ebola-free: what their success means to other nations.

By Chloe Maya Villaret and Monica Salloum

August 2014 will go down in history as the month that spurred the greatest worldwide health panic in modern day history. Before long, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Ebola as “the modern era’s worst health outbreak”. A public health emergency was declared by the WHO, and chaos broke loose. Hospitals in the Liberian capital of Monrovia were attacked by angry bat-wielding mobs, health care workers treating Ebola patients in Guinea were found dead, and the arrival of Ebola patients in hospitals across Spain and the USA was greeted with alarming disapproval. There was not even information on this terrorizing disease, much less a cure for it. However, amongst this seemingly interminable flow of bad news, Nigeria emerged as a beacon of hope, an example to all other contaminated nations that Ebola could not only be contained, but completely eliminated. As of the 20th of October 2014, Nigeria was officially declared free of the Ebola virus.

 

As neighboring nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia struggle to make heads or tails of how to contain the outbreak, and newly infected nations like Mali come to terms with the gravity of the situation, Nigeria rejoices in the good news for overcoming this awful disease with a whopping case fatality rate of 71%. But many are quick to remind the international community that Nigeria’s victory against the disease is no stroke of luck –  it all comes down to getting things right from the start. It is well-known that Nigeria’s healthcare system is among the most efficient in the region, and as a result, healthcare officials were trained to deal with Ebola even before the first case was reported. Moreover, the Nigerian authorities took initiative and arranged for all local doctors to be trained by Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organisation – prevention, if we ever saw it. Above all else, Nigeria proved it was capable of reacting quickly when things got serious: a national public health emergency was declared right away, whereas countries like Guinea took over 8 months to do so. This state of emergency led to the creation of the Ebola Emergency Operations Center (EOC) which effectively came up with a strategy to wipe out the disease. The EOC then traced all possible disease-carriers and began educating local populations, most notably through social media and by training local religious and community leaders, thus containing fear.

 

“It’s possible to control Ebola. It’s possible to defeat Ebola. We’ve seen it here in Nigeria,” Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu reminds us. With a death toll coming in at over 5000, the international community must be aware of what’s at stake here. It is time to drop the excuses and the ignorance. In the words of our very own Nigerian delegate from GA 3 Hanshul Singhania “Other countries should take Nigeria as an example. Despite it’s economic situation and all it’s problems, it was brave enough and courageous enough to take steps to solve the problem.” Isn’t that what THIMUN is all about?

 

 

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