The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has declared  that it is on “alert mode” following the outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Uganda.

According to the NCDC, the risk of importation into Nigeria is high as a result of the increasing air traffic between Nigeria and Uganda, especially through Nairobi Airport in Kenya.

The NCDC, on Tuesday, stated that it had completed a rapid risk assessment in collaboration with stakeholders to inform in-country preparedness activities in a press release.

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They also said that “despite the risk assessment, Nigeria has the capacity — technical, human (health workforce) and diagnostic — to respond effectively in the event of an outbreak.

“We have diagnostic capacity to test for the EVD presently at the National Reference Laboratory in Abuja and the Lagos University Teaching Hospital’s Centre for Human and Zoonotic Virology Laboratory.

“However, diagnostic capacity will be scaled up to other laboratories in cities of important Points of Entry (POE) and others as may be required.”

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The first Ebola outbreak in Nigeria was in July 2014, following the arrival of a Liberian man to Lagos. On October 20, 2014, the outbreak was announced to have ended.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the success was owed in great part to the efforts of the Nigerian Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP).

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Prior to the outbreak, the FETP had already established a strong presence in Lagos. Their contact tracing efforts helped identify and isolate potential cases of Ebola. 

While Nigeria recorded success in containing the EVD outbreak in 2014, the same cannot be said for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NCDC had previously claimed to be fully prepared in the event of a COVID-19 outbreak, but it implemented a priority-based COVID-19 testing strategy due to a shortage of adequate testing resources and efficient laboratory networks.

This was after delaying travel restrictions three weeks after recording the index case, and waiting eight weeks to implement a lockdown nation-wide.

According to the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), “this may have undermined conventional global community spread of the virus in the ensuing months in the country”.