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The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has assured travellers and aviation stakeholders that there is currently no confirmed case of Ebola virus disease in the country, despite heightened concerns following reported outbreaks in parts of Central Africa.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, FAAN said it had intensified preventive measures at international airports nationwide to guard against any possible importation of the virus into Nigeria.
The Authority disclosed that “robust health surveillance and monitoring systems” have already been activated across all international airports to ensure early detection and prompt response to any suspected case.
FAAN explained that it is working closely with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Port Health Services and other relevant agencies to strengthen passenger screening procedures, especially for travellers arriving from high-risk regions.
According to the Authority, passengers are currently being screened for symptoms associated with Ebola, while any suspected case is “immediately isolated and subjected to secondary medical evaluation in line with national and international health protocols.”
The agency further stated that it has intensified staff sensitisation programmes, reinforced emergency response procedures and improved coordination with airport stakeholders to ensure swift action if required.
While reiterating that Nigeria remains free of any confirmed Ebola infection, FAAN urged passengers to remain calm and cooperate fully with health officials during screening exercises at airports.
Travellers were also advised to promptly report any symptoms or health concerns to relevant authorities as part of efforts to protect public health and maintain safe airport operations across the country.
The United States will ensure that the Democratic Republic of Congo’s team are able to travel to play in the World Cup, making an exemption to an entry ban over Ebola, a US official said Tuesday.
“We expect the DRC team to be able to attend the World Cup,” a senior State Department official said on condition of anonymity.
The United States has banned non-Americans who have been in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days from visiting due to the deadly outbreak of Ebola.
The US official said the DR Congo team, the only one among the three countries to have qualified for soccer’s premier event, had already been training in Europe so may not have been subject to the ban in any case.
But if they in fact were in DR Congo over the last 21 days, they would be subject to strict screening of the sort required for returning American citizens — not a complete ban.
Read Also: DR Congo Ebola Crisis Now A WHO International Emergency
“We’re working to get them into the same protocol for testing in isolation that American citizens returning and permanent residents would be,” the official said.
The official said that the exemption would not apply to ordinary fans from DR Congo looking to come to cheer on the team.
DR Congo have qualified for only the second time for the World Cup after playing in 1974, when the country was known as Zaire.
The DR Congo “Leopards” plan to maintain a base in Houston, where they will play their first match on June 17 against Portugal as part of Group K.
The team is scheduled to head to Guadalajara to play Colombia on June 24 before returning to the United States to play Uzbekistan in Atlanta on June 28.
The World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern over an Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo — its highest alert level, triggered after the Bundibugyo strain of the virus moved beyond its origin point in Ituri province, crossed into Uganda and turned up in Kinshasa, DRC’s capital, thousands of kilometers from where the outbreak began.
Around 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths have been recorded so far. Eight have been laboratory confirmed. But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was frank about the gap between those figures and reality, warning of “significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread.” The outbreak, in other words, is almost certainly bigger than what health systems are currently able to see.
What separates this crisis from previous Ebola emergencies is the strain involved.
The Bundibugyo virus has no approved vaccine and no approved treatment — the medical tools that helped contain earlier outbreaks simply do not exist for this one. Historical data puts its case fatality rate at around 30 percent.
Uganda confirmed two cases, including the death of a 59-year-old Congolese man whose body was subsequently returned home. A confirmed case also emerged in Goma, the eastern city currently under M23 rebel control. The confirmed Kinshasa case — believed to involve a patient who had traveled from Ituri — is the data point that sharpens the urgency most. When a pathogen with no available vaccine reaches a capital city of nearly 17 million people, the containment calculation changes entirely.
