There have been over 3,400 EBOLA deaths reported in West Africa. But now, it seems that Africa's most populous nation is sighing of relief. As an update, Nigeria's health ministry stated that the West African country has officially claimed control over the virus outbreak that devastated nearby countries.
According to an update by USA Today, people in Nigeria were back to work and children were finally in school, it is because the nation is officially EBOLA-free. As the deadly virus wrecks its neighboring nations, Nigeria was able to contain the disease. As said by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no new cases have been reported since Aug.31.
As reported by Huffington Post through an Oct. 7 updated CDC information, Nigeria has been downgraded to a Level 1 watch by the agency because of the reduced risk of EBOLA virus transmission.
As Spain and the United States deal with their first confirmed cases of EBOLA and dreads the spreading of the virus, Nigeria's successful control of the disease has taken US officials' attention in the hope to prevent transmission of the virus in America. The CDC is sending researchers to the West African nation's largest city to study how they were able to contain the deadly virus.
According to an update reported by The Guardian, the ongoing Nigeria's crisis to eradicate polio has actually helped the nation in preventing EBOLA. As said by CDC Director Tom Frieden, the nation's successful virus containment was due to its extensive response to a single EBOLA case and that prevention is possible with fast and motivated interventions.
In Nigeria, Reuters reported that employing emergency missions, healthcare workers had confirmed 19 EBOLA cases. Officials has identified 894 contacts with those cases and conducted over 18,000 visits with those who had potentially been infected to monitor the virus' symptoms. However, in the latest update, no new cases have occurred.
While Nigeria's efforts to contain the EBOLA outbreak have succeeded, transmission of the virus continues in the worst struck West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. This is because of the poor health infrastructures and inadequate dissemination of information regarding the deadly virus in these countries.
In line with Nigeria's success in controlling the virus, there should have adequate trained healthcare personnel, equipment and facilities available to isolate those showing EBOLA symptoms in well-equipped treatment centers in order to contain the EBOLA outbreak. Rapid actions in West Africa, specifically educating communities about the disease, symptoms, treatment, contact tracing and how to bury the dead, can help end this virus.
There are really no short cuts in eradicating EBOLA, and urgent global support is significant in building treatment centers to stop the outbreak. And to this point, World Health Organization's latest update said that there have been 3,865 deaths and 8,033 total cases worldwide.
