A senior field epidemiologist, Dr Peter Adewuyi. Photo: Arise TV
A senior field epidemiologist, Dr Peter Adewuyi, has urged the Federal Government to rely on Nigeria’s trained epidemiologists to contain the confirmed Ebola case and prevent further spread of the disease.
Recall that on Tuesday, the federal government confirmed one case of Ebola disease in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The government also commenced contact tracing, with 44 close contacts identified as part of efforts to prevent further transmission.
The woman is currently in isolation and receiving medical care.
Adewuyi, who coordinated contact tracing during Nigeria’s 2014 Ebola outbreak, said the country had sufficient expertise to manage the response without bringing in foreign specialists.
He stated, “We have about 500 epidemiologists in the country and the government should just allow the epidemiologists to do their work.”
Speaking on ARISE News on Thursday, he acknowledged that the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention had initiated response measures early but expressed concern that the latest case was detected later than the recommended period.
He explained that the country uses a surveillance benchmark known as the 7-1-7 target to assess how quickly public health threats are identified, reported and addressed.
“We have this thing called 717, which is a key performance indicator that we use in surveillance to be able to know whether we are detecting early. We are supposed to detect within seven days, report within a day and then respond within seven days.
“Response is okay, reporting is okay, but the detection took for this about eight to nine days and that is the fear as far as the response that we are given right now,” he said.
Reiterating his position that Nigeria could handle the situation with its existing workforce, Adewuyi said external epidemiologists were not necessary for the response.
“Nigeria does not need people to come from outside,” he said.
He added that the African Field Epidemiology Network was assisting the NCDC in strengthening field operations by deploying more epidemiologists.
“I think, for example, now, AFINET is supporting the NCDC to get more epidemiologists on ground.”
Adewuyi also highlighted the role of the country’s Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response system in monitoring disease outbreaks across health facilities, local government areas, states and the national level.
“The IDSR is the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response System whereby we are able to track diseases in all the local governments of Nigeria, starting from the government to the health facilities to the local government to the state and then to the national. This is part of the system that works,” he said.
On contact tracing, the epidemiologist said health authorities must identify everyone who interacted with the patient before the diagnosis, including hospital workers who may have come into contact with her during treatment.
“So in this case, all the people that treated this person from day one till the time she was diagnosed, all of these people are contacts. Whether the person that came to sweep the room, whether the person that came to make the bed, every one of them,” he said.
He warned that the number of contacts could increase as investigations progressed and urged anyone who might have been exposed to provide accurate information to health officials to support the response.