Ebola: NCDC approves ₦100,000 weekly allowance for quarantined contacts

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC)

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) says it has approved a weekly allowance of ₦100,000 per person for people quarantined following possible exposure to Nigeria’s confirmed Ebola patient in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The Director-General of the NCDC, Jide Idris, disclosed this during a media briefing in Abuja on Sunday, explaining that the intervention followed complaints from some contacts about their inability to attend to their businesses and family responsibilities while in quarantine.

Mr Idris said the agency was already covering accommodation and feeding costs for those placed in designated facilities but had introduced additional financial support to ease their difficulties.

“We are paying for their accommodation, we are paying for their feeding. Some of them are asking for a stipend to maintain their families,” he said.

“We are providing ₦100,000 per person per week just to maintain their comfort and feeding, because they were complaining.”

He explained that some contacts had complained about being unable to leave the quarantine facilities to attend to their businesses and family responsibilities.

Mr Idris said the NCDC introduced the allowance as a temporary measure to ease tensions, although the expenditure had not been planned.

“But again, it’s an emergency. We continue to review it as we go along,” he said.

He stressed that state governments were expected to provide the facilities, funding and other resources required to manage contacts during public health emergencies.

“These are the responsibilities of the various state governments,” he said.

“So each state again must provide money, must provide the materials for it to do this.”

Mr Idris said the NCDC had identified 53 primary contacts linked to Nigeria’s confirmed Ebola case in the FCT.

“As of now, we have 53 primary contacts. These comprise 44 people from the health facility where the patient was treated and nine additional contacts,” he said.

He explained that the nine additional contacts included the patient’s husband, driver and chef, three healthcare workers who attended to her at another clinic, and three members of the team involved in collecting samples.

The contacts had been listed and categorised according to their level of exposure, with public health teams continuing to monitor their health.

Mr Idris said investigators were also working to identify secondary contacts by establishing who the primary contacts might have interacted with.

He explained that some contacts were being monitored in designated facilities, while others could be placed under home quarantine depending on their level of exposure and risk assessment.

The contacts are expected to be monitored for 21 days after their last possible exposure, in line with Ebola’s incubation period.

Mr Idris stressed that being identified as a contact does not mean a person has Ebola but allows health authorities to monitor their health and detect possible infections early.

Mr Idris said premises associated with the confirmed patient and her husband had been disinfected as part of efforts to reduce the risk of transmission.

It said disinfection teams would be deployed to other relevant locations where necessary.

He also said healthcare workers and contact-tracing personnel were receiving infection prevention and control training, while standard operating procedures had been circulated to healthcare facilities and state governments.

It added that supplies of personal protective equipment were being replenished, while laboratory reagents provided by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) were being distributed to support testing.

The NCDC said it had also revised its Ebola case definition to strengthen the identification of suspected cases, including through community-based surveillance.

Under the simplified guidance, people with persistent fever that does not respond to treatment for common causes of fever, as well as those with warning signs such as unexplained bleeding or bloody diarrhoea, are advised to seek medical attention promptly.

The agency urged healthcare workers to report suspected cases and take appropriate precautions without waiting for laboratory confirmation.

It also appealed to Nigerians to cooperate with public health authorities and avoid spreading unverified information that could undermine efforts to contain the disease.

Nigeria confirmed an imported Ebola case in the FCT on Tuesday, 20 October, marking the country’s first confirmed case since the 2014 outbreak.

The patient is a 42-year-old Ugandan-born woman resident in Abuja who recently returned from a holiday in Kampala, Uganda.

According to the Africa CDC, the woman returned to Nigeria on 3 October and developed symptoms three days later.

On Friday, Nigerian authorities announced that genomic analysis showed a high degree of similarity between the virus detected in the Nigerian patient and that found in Kenya’s first imported case.

The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Muhammad Pate, said the finding did not establish that the Nigerian patient was infected in Kenya, as there was no evidence that she had travelled there.

The Africa CDC had earlier said it was investigating a possible link between the Nigerian and Kenyan cases because both patients travelled through Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport on 3 October.

Kenya’s first case was imported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) through Uganda. The country has since recorded nine confirmed cases, including two deaths, with the eight additional infections linked to the first patient.

Nike Adebowale covers the health beat. She holds a degree from Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti. Twitter: @nikeadebowale1