Complaints of neglect of Ebola Virus Disease patients, abandoned without adequate care in an isolation centre in Lagos, constitute a definite setback capable of frustrating ongoing efforts to contain the rampant spread of the deadly disease. Brought into Nigeria barely a month ago – precisely on July 20 – by a visiting Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, the disease has already been contracted by nine additional people, from which four deaths have been recorded, including the index case that died barely five days after arriving in the country.
According to relations and professional colleagues of those in quarantine at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, the patients had been denied adequate care and medication, creating the impression of being abandoned at the hospital to die. “They are just there as if they have been forgotten,” alleged Helen Boyo-Ekwueme, a pathologist, who claimed to have visited the wards where the patients were kept.
Even things as basic as running water, light and sanitary facilities were reportedly lacking at the centre, prompting another medical doctor, Ladi Okuboyejo, to describe the situation at the wards as appalling. More worrisome are claims that medical attendants were running away from the patients, apparently because medical personnel are at the greatest risk of contracting the disease. This is quite unfortunate.
Though Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State’s plea for understanding is soothing, it is simply just not enough. Fashola said, “They are receiving the best care that the experts have recommended to us, given the circumstances: because they say that this is the best way to proceed, especially because experienced personnel in Ebola containment and management have always been a challenge.” He, therefore, requested additional medical personnel “who are willing to volunteer to join hands with those on the frontline.”
The inconvenient truth is that our health authorities, especially at the federal level, were caught napping as Sawyer mischievously exploded the deadly virus on our shores. The teething problems, including our badly managed entry points the governor referred to in his broadcast, would have been sorted out if our public officials had acted proactively. For instance, the recruited experts that needed additional training would have been trained; well-equipped isolation centres would have been created and adequate public sensitisation programme would have been launched. Why has it been so difficult to make even personal protective equipment, especially gloves, impermeable gown, boots/closed shoes with overshoes, masks, goggles or face shields abundantly available to health workers who are at higher risk of infection?
It should be noted that the singular action of abandoning the patients could discourage people with symptoms of the disease from reporting at isolation centres, leading to very serious repercussions. It could even push people into taking desperate measures of removing their loved ones from quarantine centres, supposedly for better care elsewhere, which could also prove fatally dangerous.
It is for situations like this that government exists; to take control when there is a common threat to the collective interest of citizens. What the government is being called upon to do is not a favour to the people but a responsibility, which should be painstakingly undertaken to avert an imminent disaster that could, potentially, spare no one. For, as long as there is still an Ebola case in the country, everybody – even those at the highest levels of government – remains at risk.
From the statistics available, apart from the very first outbreak in Congo Democratic Republic (Zaire) in 1976, where the fatality rate was put at 90 per cent, the rate of death has been reducing, though not progressively, in subsequent outbreaks. The current outbreak, which has claimed about 1,145 lives in 2,127 cases in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, according to the World Health Organisation, has about 60 per cent mortality rate. What it means is that, if the patients are well looked after and given the necessary support care, they could pull through, which is exactly what has happened with the reported recovery and discharge of a medical doctor who first attended to Sawyer when he arrived the country.
Since Sawyer’s case was reported, 169 people have been placed under surveillance in Lagos, according to the Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu. He also stated that Enugu State had just six people under surveillance, after 15 others were released upon discovery that they had no direct contact with a nurse who defied advice and travelled to the state when she was supposed to be under quarantine. Notably, all the dead people and the confirmed cases were either members of the medical team that attended to the index case or those who had direct contact with him.
Though it’s meaningless crying over spilt milk, the Federal Government must start taking bolder initiatives to arrest the scourge. Since the WHO does not advise families or communities to care for individuals who may present symptoms of Ebola virus disease in their homes, it is the duty of government to provide all the equipment and drugs that are necessary for the care of the victims. There is no time to waste.
