When there is fire in our neighbour’s compound, the sensible thing to do is get extinguishers ready and take other actions to stop our abodes being torched.
News about the isolation of an Ebola case in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, as contained in a BBC news bulletin a couple of days ago made disturbing listening.
Having emerged from the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic, the story could not have been scarier.
Nigeria and Ghana are so close that Togo and Benin Republic do not appear to constitute adequate partitions between them.
The isolation of the deadly disease should therefore trigger immediate responsive measures to protect us against it.
Fortunately, the productive template exists for replication. There should be no irresponsible playing of politics in this matter and no scandals. It will be foolish to ignore the previous template which helped us greatly in the face of COVID-19 just because it did not originate from the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Those in charge could engage managers of the COVID-19 protocols for important lessons.
We want to assume that the Minister of Health has constituted a committee to respond to the Ebola-in-Nigeria story. Not acting immediately could spell untoward aftermaths.
There might not be an immediate cause for alarm, but under the circumstances and the deadly nature of the disease whose variant has no known vaccine, let us all be prepared.
It would be in our mutual interest if Nigerian and their Ghanaian authorities set up a common response committee with the support of the World Health Organisation towards dealing with the emerging health challenge which can be fueled by cross border movements.
Our Port Health Department and other frontier officials should be abreast with the developments and know how to respond to it. This is not the time to turn blind eyes to the influx of migrants from Niger and others into the country, because this is an unusual time in our health history.
When the story of Ebola broke out in East Africa, it sounded distant, poles apart from Ghana it appeared. Now Nigeria has isolated a case and even embarked upon a contact tracing to determine whether or not other persons who travelled from Kenya and Ebola endemic parts of the region landed in the country.
With our borders flung open as though there are no existing protocols to control the entry of foreigners, we remain vulnerable.
A few months ago, we had cause to complain about how we are faced with a national security challenge as presented by the uncontrollable influx of young Niger nationals into the country. Most of these young men are into the okada business. In fact, they account for close to forty percent of the riders in Accra, present at most junctions and intersections in the nation’s capital.
With militant activities in Niger, our vulnerability cannot be ignored.
Niger shares a border with Nigeria, and given the isolation of an Ebola case in the latter, the implication of the situation should the subject escalate can only be imagined.