When Jefferson, America’s third President made the above remark in 1800, there was nothing like Nigeria, but certainly it was influenced or prompted by the kind of senseless politicking that steadily goes on here today. Otherwise, why should the stellar performance of Nigeria in the control of the deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak which has won us international commendations suddenly turn to a curse, a source of mutual acrimony and mudslinging between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), merely because one side dared to lay claim to the achievement? In all honesty, are the opposition elements telling us that if they were in power today they would not lay claim to the medical feat and go ahead to exploit it the best way they can?
The ongoing controversy is totally unnecessary, and should therefore be made to stop forthwith. I don’t think that it will help the cause of opposition politics if the electorate begins to associate it with unnecessary but incessant fault-finding that tends to destabilize the polity. Our politicians should take a cue from the Americans whose officials are instructively here to study our EVD containment model. With their Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP)—a federal agency—completely in charge, although their first Ebola case occurred in Texas, a state under the control of the Republicans, should the pandemic pose a real national crisis but the Obama administration is able in the end to checkmate it, it is unthinkable that he would share the glory with the Governor of Texas, whose party would in no way contemplate such a gesture let alone squabble over it. In fact, what the attitude of the APC to the Ebola success story tends to portend is that should President Jonathan secure the release of the Chibok girls, Nigeria will witness yet another controversy concerning who should take the credit, even though up till now only Jonathan and his party have borne the brunt by taking all the criticisms and blames.
In their quest to take over leadership of the country from their counterparts, which is quite legitimate, the opposition had better take care in setting standards, bearing in mind that same would be used in judging them tomorrow should their dream come true. To be sure, the essential principle of public health is teamwork. It demands cooperation across various disciplines including medicine, nursing, social work and emergency services when there’s a disease outbreak. As several commentators have rightly observed in the last couple of weeks, President Goodluck Jonathan had admirably fast-tracked this process by declaring a national public health emergency very early in the course of the outbreak, facilitating the mobilization of diverse national resources to contain the spread of the deadly disease.
Contact-tracing, the identification of all persons who had direct close contact with the primary source patient (in this case Patrick Sawyer) was the key public health activity that had to be done. In a diverse and heterogeneous country like ours with high social mobility, such a process had to cut across state lines. Contacts had to be traced all the way from Lagos to Enugu and from Port Harcourt to Abia State. Various State and local government authorities were involved and hence it will be wrong for anyone or two states to decide to claim credit for containing the disease. Indeed, in any system involving teamwork, commendations may only be given instead to the person at the centre who enabled other members of the team to perform to their optimum potential, in which case the applause will be reserved for the Head of State, President Goodluck Jonathan, and by extension his party. However, as revealed in his last Independence Day broadcast, even he recognizes that it was a multi-disciplinary effort for which no one person or group of persons can take credit.
Disease control experts in the United States have been full of praise for the way and manner in which Nigeria tackled the Ebola outbreak. “Although Nigeria isn’t completely out of the woods, their extensive response to a single case of Ebola shows that control is possible with rapid, focused interventions,” said Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director, Tom Frieden. The CDC pointed out several quick actions taken by Nigerian authorities as crucial. Nigeria’s Port Health Services began contact-tracing at the airport and worked with airlines and partners to ensure outbreak notifications were made according to International Health Regulations established by the World Health Organization. Nigeria’s Ministry of Health activated an Ebola Incident Management Center (a precursor to its current Emergency Operations Centre) and charged it with leading the national response; that centre was led by an incident manager chosen for experience and competency.
Overall design of the Ebola response came from a senior strategy team that included international partners, including Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, CDC, and WHO. Among its activities, the team developed a staffing plan that executed a social mobilization strategy that reached more than 26,000 households of people living around the contacts of Ebola patients. Nigeria’s decision to use the emergency operations centre to respond to the Ebola outbreak resulted in a rapid, effective and coordinated response, with the Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, the President’s appointee at the centre of the whole activity. Gavin MacGregor-Skinner who worked with the Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation in coordinating the Ebola response in Nigeria gave some insight on the way public health workers went about locating all those that might have been exposed to the dreaded disease. Because identified contacts were required to be open and forthright about their movements and their health, it was realized early that stigmatization of patients, their families and contacts could only discourage that. So Nigerian officials sent a message to “really make them look like heroes,” MacGregor-Skinner said.
In the end, contact-tracers — trained professionals and volunteers — conducted 18,500 face-to-face visits to assess potential symptoms, according to the CDC, and the list of contacts throughout the country grew to 894. Two months later, Nigeria ended up with a total of 20 confirmed or probable cases and eight deaths. The robust public health response resulted in the WHO declaring that Nigeria has successfully contained the Ebola menace. Viewed objectively, it was no feat which any two Nigerian states could achieve, no matter how rich they may be. Our politicians should learn to give honour to whom it is due.
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Ebola: The limits of opposition politics |
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