The House of Representatives yesterday asked the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control to set up a national response to control the likely emergence and spread of the Ebola virus in order to spare Nigeria the brunt of the pandemic.
The House adopted a motion by Dachung Bagos (PDP, Plateau) who noted that Ugandan health authorities had declared an outbreak of Ebola disease, caused by Sudan virus, on September 20 following the laboratory confirmation of a patient from a village in Madudu sub-county, Mubende District.
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Bagos recalled that the World Health Organisation had feared that in the absence of licensed vaccines and therapeutics for prevention and treatment of the Sudan virus disease, the risk of potential serious public health impact was high.
“According to the information currently available, the overall risk has been assessed as high at national level considering: the confirmed Sudan virus and the lack of an authorized vaccine, the possibility that the event started three weeks before the identification of the index case and several transmission chains have not been tracked”.
