Expert urges FG to let Nigerian epidemiologists lead Ebola response
- Dr Peter Adewuyi says Nigeria's roughly 500 epidemiologists can handle the confirmed Ebola case without foreign specialists.
- He says the Abuja case took eight to nine days to detect, against a seven-day target.
- The NCDC has begun contact tracing, with 44 close contacts identified so far.
A senior field epidemiologist, Dr Peter Adewuyi, has asked the Federal Government to let Nigeria's own disease detectives run the response to the country's confirmed Ebola case, saying there is no need to bring in specialists from abroad.
The Federal Government announced the case in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, on Tuesday. The patient, a woman, is in isolation and receiving treatment, and contact tracing has started, with 44 close contacts identified so far.
Adewuyi, who helped coordinate contact tracing during Nigeria's 2014 Ebola outbreak, said the country has the manpower to contain the disease itself. He put the number of trained epidemiologists in Nigeria at about 500.
"We have about 500 epidemiologists in the country and the government should just allow the epidemiologists to do their work,"
he said on ARISE News on Thursday. He added: "Nigeria does not need people to come from outside."
Detection took longer than target
Adewuyi said the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) moved quickly once the case was known, but the detection itself was slow. Nigeria measures outbreak response against a benchmark known as 7-1-7: detect a threat within seven days, report it within one day, and respond within seven days.
He said reporting and response met the mark in this case, but detection took about eight to nine days.
"That is the fear as far as the response that we are given right now,"
he said.
He said the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) is helping the NCDC put more epidemiologists on the ground. He also pointed to the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) system, which tracks diseases from health facilities through local government areas and states up to the national level.
On contact tracing, Adewuyi said the net must be wide. Everyone who treated the patient from day one until she was diagnosed counts as a contact, he said, including hospital staff who cleaned her room or made her bed. He warned that the list of 44 could grow as the investigation continues, and urged anyone who may have been exposed to give health officials accurate information.
What happens next
The patient remains in isolation while the NCDC continues its response, with AFENET supporting the deployment of more epidemiologists to the field. Adewuyi said the number of identified contacts could rise as investigations continue.
