Nigeria Latest To Declare National State of Emergency For Ebola
Nigeria has become the latest country in Africa in recent weeks to declare a national state of emergency over the recent and rapid spread of the Ebola virus.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said in a statement Friday that the national state of emergency was declared to "to effectively contain the threat of the Ebola virus in line with international protocols and best practices."
Jonathan also allocated $11.7 million of government funds to be spent on disease intervention and prevention. So far, two people in Nigeria have died of the deadly disease, and seven other are confirmed infected.
Nearby Liberia and Sierra Leone have also declared similar national health emergencies in response to the spreading virus. This most recent outbreak of Ebola that began in March 2014 has been the largest in history, infecting at least 1,700 and killing 900.
The World Health Organization has also declared the recent West Africa outbreak to be an international health crisis. Doctors Without Borders, an international medical organization, released a statement calling on the "massive deployment" of health specialists from around the world to the affected countries. "Lives are being lost because the response is too slow," the organization added in a statement.
"This is the largest, most severe, most complex outbreak in the nearly four-decade history of the disease," Dr. Margaret F.C. Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization, said at a news conference this week.
"I am declaring the current outbreak of the Ebola virus disease a public health emergency of international concern," she continued. "Countries affected to date simply don't have the capacity to manage an outbreak on this scale on their own."
