The Nigerian federal government has made greater efforts to keep the Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome(SARS) out of the country, a senior health official
said Friday.
Alhaji Shehu Suleiman, permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Health,
said the measures adopted were aimed at ensuring that the epidemic did not enter
the most populous African country with a population of over 126 million.
The permanent secretary, who is also chairman of Nigeria's Inter-Ministerial
Committee on the Prevention of SARS, said the materials included special masks,
gloves, protective gowns, infra-red digital thermometers, spray machines and
chemicals.
"I am glad to state that some quantities of these materials have been
procured and deployed to ports of entry for easy identification of cases,"
Suleiman said.
In addition, Nigeria has also installed facilities at the nation's six
international airports in Abuja, Lagos, Calabar, Kanoand Port Harcourt for the
screening of arriving passengers.
Suleiman said the materials had been distributed to centers while
epidemiologists had been stationed in the areas for the exercise.
He called for mass mobilization by all Nigerians, especially the media, to
educate the people about the symptoms, which include high fever, dry cough,
difficult breathing, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, headache and body
aches.
According to the permanent secretary, public health organizations across the
country have been directed to set up quarantine and isolation treatment wards to
attend to eventual cases of SARS.
In Lagos, the largest commercial city in the West African country, more than
4,000 people arriving from SARS-infected countries and regions around the world
have been screened since the federal government began its surveillance for the
disease.
Similarly, five Nigerians deported from Southeast Asia, where the infection
has a high prevalence rate, were quarantined for at least 10 days to ascertain
their state of health.
Earlier, Abdulsalami Nasidi, chairman of the ministerial team on SARS of the
Federal Health Ministry, said that the federal government was ready to tackle
the disease if it eventually entered the country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that the syndrome, which spreads
through cough and sneezes but can be transmitted by touching contaminated
objects, has a death rate of around 10 per cent or more.
It has claimed 790 of lives around the world and infected 8,445in about 30
countries since its emergence late last year. But the pneumonia-like disease has
not been reported in Nigeria yet.
On Thursday, the WHO said that the global SARS outbreak may be nearing an
end.
