By Fola James
Nigeria’s worst fear over the fast spreading corona virus has now been confirmed.
The world Health Organization, WHO has just disclosed that Nigerians are vulnerable to the virus.
Other 12 African countries were also mentioned by the organization as places of high concern.
The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, had few hours ago said, control centres have been activated across the country to stop the virus from spreading the the country.
The concern, however, is that many Nigerian business men still travel to China and no serious effort have been made by the government to control movement between the two countries.
Nigeria has one of the highest number of Chinese in Africa.
In fact, the number of Chinese nationals coming into the country has grown in the last five years due to the flourishing bilateral relations between the two countries.
Countries like US, UK and EU have already issued travel ban to their citizens.
Russia, Hong Kong have also recently shut their borders with China.
France, Italy are among the countries that have airlifted their citizens from China, to stop the spread of disease which has already killed close to 200.
Unofficial sources say the death toll could even be more, considering that China is a highly closed nation.
Chinese authorities insist that the number of those killed is less than 200 persons.
The virus has already spread to more than 30 countries.
WHO named vulnerable countries to be Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) which it said,either have direct links or a high volume of travel to China.
The world body said ” To enure rapid detection of the novel coronavirus, it is important to have laboratories which can test samples and WHO is supporting countries to improve their testing capacity. Since this is a new virus, there are currently only two referral laboratories in the African region which have the reagents needed to conduct such tests.”
It said “reagent kits are being shipped to more than 20 other countries in the region, so diagnostic capacity is expected to increase over the coming days.
Active screening at airports has been established in a majority of these countries and while they will be WHO first areas of focus, the organization will support all countries in the region in their preparation efforts.”
According to a statement released few hours ago WHO said“It is critical that countries step up their readiness and in particular put in place effective screening mechanisms at airports and other major points of entry to ensure that the first cases are detected quickly”
The statement was signed by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti.
“The quicker countries can detect cases, the faster they will be able to contain an outbreak and ensure the novel coronavirus does not overwhelm health systems.”
As yet, there are no confirmed cases of the potentially fatal virus on the African continent.
Ethiopian Minister of Health Lia Tadesse said four possible cases there have tested negative for 2019-nCoV, as has been the case elsewhere.
