As Ebola Returns!

By Tayo Ogunbiyi

Ebola is a dreadful disease that once ravaged the West African coast, leaving in its trail sorrow, tears and blood. According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) data, at its peak, Ebola had over 10,000 victims in West Africa. The WHO records further reveals that 9,936 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone contracted the disease. Nigeria also had her own share of the Ebola brouhaha, no thanks to the dastardly escapade of late American-Liberian, Patrick Sawyer.

After weeks of scary Ebola episode, Nigerians were understandably over-joyous to hear the news that the country was certified Ebola-free. While the Ebola trauma lasted, 19 cases were recorded out of which eight died and 11 survived.  Aside the number of lives it claimed and attendant psychological trauma, the Ebola ordeal came with lots of economic losses. 

Gov Fashola, According To London Telegraph

Meet The Man Who Tamed Nigeria's Most Lawless City...

 By Colin Freeman

*Fashola 

He famously claims to be "just doing his job". But in a land where politicians are known for doing anything but, that alone has been enough to make Babatunde Fashola, boss of the vast Nigerian city of Lagos, a very popular man.

Confounding the image of Nigerian leaders as corrupt and incompetent, the 51-year-old governor has won near-celebrity status for transforming west Africa's biggest city, cleaing up its crime-ridden slums and declaring war on corrupt police and civil servants.

Next month, he will come to London to meet business leaders and Mayor Boris Johnson's officials, wooing investors with talk of how he has spent the last seven years building new transport hubs and gleaming business parks.

Yet arguably his biggest achievement in office took place just last week, and was done without a bulldozer in sight. That was when his country was officially declared free of Ebola, which first spread to Nigeriathree months ago when Patrick Sawyer, an infected Liberian diplomat, flew into Lagos airport.

Health officials had long feared that the outbreak, which has already claimed nearly 5,000 lives elsewhere in west Africa, would reach catastrophic proportions were it to spread through Lagos. One of the largest cities in the world, it is home to an estimated 17 million people, many of them living in sprawling shanty towns that would have become vast reservoirs for infection. To make matters worse, when the outbreak first happened, medics were on strike.

Instead, Mr Fashola turned a looming disaster into a public health and PR triumph. Breaking off from a trip overseas, he took personal charge of the operation to track down and quarantine nearly 1,000 people feared to have been infected since Mr Sawyer's arrival.

Last week, what would have been a formidably complex operation in any country came to a successful end, when the World Health Organisation announced that since Nigeria had had no new cases for six weeks, it was now officially rid of the virus.

"This is a spectacular success story," said Rui Gama Vaz, a WHO spokesman, who prompted an applause when he broke the news at a press conference in Nigeria on Tuesday. "It shows that Ebola can be contained."

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