₦airaland Forum

wellmax: At 30 am I qualify

Title should be "Will I be qualified at 30"
"Will I be qualified when I clock 30"

Nigeria Free Of Ebola, Final Surveillance Contacts Released

As the WHO Ebola Response Team published dire predictions of the West African outbreak in the New England Journal of Medicine, overnight – including an updated 70.8% fatality rate – the Health Minister of Nigeria reports that his country is completely free of active Ebola cases and have today released the final victim contacts from surveillance.

In a telephone interview last night where he was preparing for a United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu, MD, said, “Presently, there is no single case of Ebola virus disease in Nigeria – none.”

Dr. Chukwu provided further details, saying, “No cases are under treatment, no suspected cases. There are no contacts in Lagos that are still under surveillance, having completed a minimum of 21 days of observation.”

In the process of tracing contacts of individuals infected with Ebola, anyone showing no symptoms after three weeks of last known contact with a victim is considered free of any potential for the disease.

Rivers State, whose capital city is Port Hartcourt, had been home to over 400 contacts under medical surveillance. As of last night, only 25 contacts remained.

“None of them are showing any symptoms. Tonight [Mon 22 Sept] will mark the end of their 21 days of observation and the plan is to get them discharged from surveillance tomorrow [Tues 23 Sept].”

“Nigeria will be as clean as any other country as far as Ebola virus disease is concerned.”

Achievement in perspective

PBS TV reporter Fred de Sam Lazaro wrote yesterday from Port Hartcourt, “The story of Ebola in Nigeria is an unusual and frankly rare one about things going right somewhere in Africa.”

“Nigeria’s achievement truly hits home for a television crew working “in the trenches” of a country the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency describes as “hobbled by … insecurity and pervasive corruption,” added Lazaro.

His team’s outstanding 8-minute report aired last night on PBS Newshour.

Indeed, the disease has now been contained in Lagos, a city of 21 million people, and Port Hartcourt, population 14 million.

Nigeria is the most populous country on in African, with 177 million people, yet only suffered 21 Ebola cases and eight deaths. In contrast, Liberia has just 4.3 million people yet has experienced 2,710 reported cases, with 1,459 deaths (as of 18 September).

Ebola virus was brought to Nigeria when naturalized American and Liberian Ministry of Finance official, Patrick Sawyer, traveled to Lagos for a meeting of the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) in Calabar on July 23.

Sawyer had symptoms of the disease before leaving Liberia and became very ill on the flight, infecting others from ECOWAS who greeted him and at the hospital where he was treated and died two days later.

A contact under quarantine in Lagos for some reason took flight to Port Harcourt, about a seven-hour drive. There, he was treated in secret by Dr. Ikechukwu Enemuo. Both later died.

Enemuo infected others, including his wife and sister. Both were successfully treated and recovered. But authorities had to track 477 contacts in the Port Hartcourt area.

The need for cautious communication

Dr. Chukwu told me, and has said publicly elsewhere, that one challenge in Nigeria has been preventing stigmatization of anyone under surveillance as well as Ebola survivors.

“Three terms became part of our lexicon: surveillance, quarantine, and isolation.” But these need to be clearly explained, said Dr. Chukwu.

“Surveillance is sort of like house arrest. You don’t criminalize them. The person is actually a victim, not a criminal. We monitor their movements, the rest of the family are counseled about what contact can and can’t be done. We have contact with them everyday. You can imagine what this effort must’ve been like when we had 300 in Lagos and over 400 in Port Hartcourt.”

Only when those under surveillance show symptoms – a fever, whether it ends up being Ebola, yellow fever, or malaria – they are put under quarantine.

“That is the first time we are denying that individual the comfort of his own bed. We put him in separately from the isolation ward from those who are confirmed. If malaria, we discharge them to their doctor to be treated for malaria.”

Credit to WHO-assigned physicians

The Ebola survivors in Nigeria were not treated with any experimental drugs. Contract tracing and early identification of cases were managed by isolating the patients and replacing fluids and electrolytes. In some cases, blood transfusions were necessary.

Dr. Chukwu had high praise for WHO Director General, Margaret Chan, for sending physicians to Nigeria. “We only knew about Ebola virus through our medical books. We’ve never seen a single case of Ebola virus until this year. So we needed someone with practical experience who had seen the virus to come and train our doctors what to do and the rest, and then we took over.”

“It is important that we let the world know that WHO did well in sending us doctors with practical experience, said Dr. Chukwu. “But we also worked with the CDC, UNICEF, and MSF in managing the disease.”

RockMaxi: @OP, when Government start throwing figures at us especially on market and food production indices one will feel we are great already. I pray that the local rice production index will be sustained I prefer the taste.

"it is a noble start as per as rice self-sufficiancy is concerned but there are something to be done as urgent solution to massive paddy production in kebbi
in kebbi, we produce rice all year round
presently,some farmers from january to august had harvested rice twice and they are planting the third phase
but no buyer,if any of the 18 integrated mills in the country need paddy, pls contact me on 08050702872,we can supply them with 1000,000mt of paddy within three month"

Massive investments in rice production by large and medium-sized corporations in the country have shot up annual domestic processed rice production to over four million metric tonnes valued at N800 billion, from 2.9 million metric tonnes valued N580 billion in the last two years.

This represents 80 percent of the five million metric tonnes of processed rice consumed yearly in the country.

Large corporations that have made massive investments in local rice production in the last few years include Olam Nigeria Limited, Stallion Foods, Best Foods, among others. Investments by these firms and the corresponding high output have made the product more readily available.

“Nigerians eat our high quality local rice but do not know. We have totally changed the quality,” Akinwunmi Adesina, minister of agriculture and rural development, said recently in Kwara State.

“You may wish to know that Stallion ‘Shinkafa rice’ and ‘Stallion super’ are all locally-milled rice from Nigeria, not imported. Our expanded local rice production has added N750 billion to the economy, with over N407 billion as net incomes to farmers and rice processors, and boosted rural economy by 360,000 jobs,” he said.

Adesina said within three years, national paddy rice production rose by an extra 7 million metric tonnes, adding that the number of integrated modern rice mills in the country rose from just one in 2011 to 18 by 2014, all processing the local paddy into high quality finished rice.

Abdulghaniyy Alabi-Ojolowo, producer of Oryza rice, a leading rice value chain investor in Lagos, says the quantity of processed rice sold to consumers that can be obtained from paddy rice is about 50 percent to 70 percent.

So within the three-year period, the country added about 3.5 million metric tonnes of processed rice, which is about 1.16 million metric tonnes annually. This figure, added to the previous 2.9 million metric tonnes of rice produced annually in the country, shows that the country is now producing over 4 million metric tonnes of rice, which is about 80 million 50 kilogramme bags of rice valued at over N800 billion.

Apart from other factors, this increase in local rice production has been boosted mainly by health concerns of the populace, particularly middle class citizens who now usually shun imported rice.

Locally-produced and well-processed rice is generally adjudged to be healthier than imported rice, most of which have spent over 10 years in storage before being brought into the country.

High-quality and well-packaged Nigerian rice currently in the market include Quarra Rice, Umza Rice, Ebony Super Rice, Eko Rice, Mikap Rice, Ashi Rice, Queen of the Niger and Mama’s Pride from Olam.

Recently, a 210,000-metric-tonne capacity rice mill by Olam Nigeria Limited, the largest in Africa, was commissioned by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Ade Adefeko, head, corporate and government relations, Olam Nigeria Limited, says the firm is enhancing food security in Nigeria through the development of a 10,000-hectare rice farm in addition to its rice milling facility, adding that 3,000 hectares out of the firm’s 10,000 are already under cultivation.

Olam’s Integrated Mill in Nasarawa State is supported by an out-grower programme which it plans to scale up from 3,000 farmers to 20,000 farmers to supply rice for its processing mill. Up to 1,000 people are employed on the farm and over 950 are employed on the milling plant at peak season.

spyder880: Really? You are right because the inside of the offices look more like living quarters. Thanks.

spyder880: These are just office buildings, lecturer's quarters are still at the back

enomakos: what is the final score?update pls

ojimbo: abeg make sure that you brought back the system of town planing, am tired of this anambra state

saxywale: thank God the article was not written by a yoruba man. lol

slim fit :
That's why my child would not come to Nigeria again, never he said. He said people were behaving like animals no offence. He reminded me of me too much. Like father like daughter. Even a monkey has better organisation than us.

Its like we deliberately make simple things look difficult. Can you imagine.

citizenY: The current armoured car scandal, in which Coscharis used waivers given to Lagos State, almost one year after
the sports festival, is a pointer to the level of corruption in the automotive business. I am sure this is standard practice in the industry.
Coscharis and his associate just got a bloody nose in the line of business...and I have no sympathy for them.

In other climes, the armored car scandal should instigate a thorough investigation into all facets of the auto distribution business, to establish the integrity of the operators by establishing if they have gone the Coscharis ay too, at one time or the other, the damage done to the treasury and the culprits of course.

Keneking: How does all of this impact the common man owning a car in Nigeria