Strategies Used to Contain Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Nigeria: A Lesson to Other Developing Countries

Abstract

The 2014 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak has been declared an international public health emergency by the WHO. It affected six West African countries among which Nigeria is one. Cases were also transmitted to UK, USA and Spain. The disease generally claim more than 11000 lives in the West African region, out of which 8 were from Nigeria. This paper aims to review the management approaches of the outbreak in Nigeria and develop specific recommendations. It was identified that immediately after the outbreak of the disease, the Nigerian government in partnership with international agencies set an Ebola Emergency Operation Centre and an Incident Management System, which were instrumental in containing the disease. A number of health protection strategies including surveillance, incident prevention/control, education and communication were put in place leading to successful management of the outbreak, hence the WHO declare the country free of Ebola in October, 2014. It is thus concluded that such approaches in conjunction with the suggested recommendations serve as a means of managing similar future outbreaks in Nigeria and other developing nations within and outside Africa.

Keywords: Ebola, Impact, Management, Nigeria