The Lagos State Governor Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, (SAN) has commended President Goodluck Jonathan’s quick response to contain the spread of the deadly Ebola Virus Disease(EVD) which broke out in the country last month.
Fashola who said the president had shown leadership in the fight against the virus also commended the Federal Government’s agencies in the fight against Ebola which has claimed four lives in Lagos, the nation’s commercial hub.
“The most important thing which is more important than money is the leadership president has shown. First by getting a grip of it by ensuring that it does not spread across the country. We must acknowledge that” Fashola said.
The governor declared this recently in Lagos.
While responding to allegation that the state government had abandoned the Ebola patients at the Isolation centre in Yaba, the governor debunked the allegation saying nothing could be further from the truth.
He said, “It is not true that we have abandoned the victims. Let me explain this to you, whilst we are dealing with a serious issue that caught us by surprise. Getting health personnel to work in that place has been one challenge. We have had to provide incentives; we also had to provide life insurance package for everybody who volunteers to work there.
So the reality of things in the place now is that we can only work with the personnel that will have. What will appear to be lack of insufficient care is the need we have at hand for health personnel to come and volunteer.
“It is a reality will have to contend with, even the best physician in the world cannot just go there and put on protective gadget and begin to work. Therefore, no matter your years of practice, you need to subject to a new regime of our technical consultants and advisers on the problem.
“Which are organizations like Doctors without Borders, World Health Organizatiion and Centre for Disease and Control. They will now train every doctor, every nurse on the protocol of putting on that equipment and taking after patients.
“ It is only when you have gone through that protocol that is when your skills as doctor and health
worker can be helpful to the patients without endangering yourself.
“I hope that is clear, we have not abandoned anybody. I get a daily brief. What I was told this morning(yesterday) is that it takes about one week to train medical personel who signs on before he can go in there, because we don’t want to engender any body’s life’, the governor explained.
He called on health workers to sign on without further delay adding that just as soldiers cannot retreat in time of war, so the health workers remain the nation’s first line of defense in the fight against the deadly virus.
His words, “ Doctor, nurses and all health workers must volunteer. This is like soldiers in a country faced with war. The first people to sign on are those people trained to defend.
“This is like policemen in the case of armed robbery; they should be first to sign on. It is possible in a carreeer life in the army you mar never face war but when the country is at war, you are our first line of defence.
“So I appeal to doctors in both private and public hospitals to go the centre and take the training and help us to complement those working there”.
It would be recalled the President Goodluck Jonathan declared national emergency on the deadly virus and approved N1.9billion to combat it.
