No fewer than 591 Nigerian have registered to join the Ebola volunteers group for deployment in hard-hit Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Minister of Health Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, stated this yesterday while giving updates on global Ebola Virus Disease.

Prof. Chukwu, said there are six countries now having active cases of Ebola – Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, United States and Spain.

Explaining that Nigeria has no active case of Ebola, he said: “Nigeria has had 19 cases with seven deaths, it is not 20 cases as being reported by foreign media. There is no single case of active Ebola Virus disease in Nigeria; no single contact that is at presentl under surveillance in any part of the country.”

He said the ban on repatriation of bodies as well as inter-state transportation of bodies are still in force.

He said: “That ban remains except where approval had been granted by the Minister of Health.

“The established precautional protocols at mass gatherings will continue and the people who had been organizing mass gatherings do contact us and we do work with them, they provide the sanitisers at the venue and we provide the personnel who teach them, assist them to carry out their temperature checks. That should continue.” He added

“As part of Nigeria’s contributions to the international team that will be set up to tackle Ebola Virus disease in those countries, already Nigeria volunteers from different heath professions have been registering with us, willing to join the international force that will go to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to help out with the containment and as of now 591 Nigerians have already registered with us in three registers we opened in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt.”

“Before we allow them to leave, certain conditions must be met, the President has to approve for them to leave Nigeria for them to leave as volunteers.”

“Secondly, they have to be given proper training on how they would avoid the disease and ensure that they don’t get it. They have to be fully and properly trained according to our standards in Nigeria which is fairly high.” He said

He also said the on-going training and re-training of health personnel being conducted by Federal Ministry of Health will be sustained while the laboratory capacity for the diagnosis of Ebola Virus diseases will continue to be expanded.

“We are awaiting the arrival of three mobile laboratories that Federal ministry of Heath ordered as part of the measures to contain the virus and they will be used in other parts of the country while currently we are working on getting installed capacity in three centres to begin to diagnose Ebola Virus disease, we have installed capacity at University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Lagos University, Teaching Hospital Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano and University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu. We will continue to upgrade, we will not relent.” He said.

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