Nigeria was declared Ebola-free on October 20th 2014. Between then and now, global strategies and interventions against Ebola has changed rapidly and the outbreak containment has been commendable; the world is looking towards that day we will pronounce an Ebola Free World. This is not to say there might not be a future occurrence of the zoonotic disease, but the last outbreak was devastating to humanity and socio-economics of affected countries. It has brought out certain weaknesses in global health system and it has to be definitively wiped out.

As part of strengthening preparedness, we recommend these 5 things to Nigeria and other countries facing equivalent risks:

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 centers nationwide. That is a huge amount of potential reporters.

2. High Environmental and Personal Hygiene Standards

Ebola is largely a hygiene challenge, all the way from the source (fruit bats and monkey meats) to human-to-human transmission. To keep Nigeria Ebola-free, we need to sustain proper cooking of food. Proper hand hygiene is all that is necessary to prevent many deadly infections: by hand-washing, and where this is not feasible, by alcohol hand rubs (sanitizers).

3. High Index of Suspicion for Ebola

We know how lucky we were that the late Patrick Sawyer was identified early at First Consultant Hospital. This is why we immortalize the late Dr Adadevoh, and why we remain grateful to the entire team at First Consultant: not only for their great sacrifice, but also for suspecting and reporting the case as early as they did.

4. Sustained Government & Political Collaboration

To #KeepNigeriaEbolaFree, Nigeria as a country must do everything to facilitate and sustain that healthy collaboration. Health is too crucial and resource-intense for us to leave our coordination to chance.

5. Sustained Community Action and Participation

We can only #KeepNigeriaEbolaFree, when we accept that our country and government need our participation to succeed. Community action is about individuals and communities getting actively involved in the decision-making process, especially where those decisions will affect their lives.

For more educative articles about outbreaks in Nigeria, follow our blog- www.blog.ebolaalert.org