PORT HARCOURT – Dr Nnanna Onyekwere, Incident Manager of Ebola Emergency Operations Centre, Rivers, on Tuesday urged Nigerians to stop stigmatising victims of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).
Making the appeal in Port Harcourt, Onyekwere told newsmen that the survivors were even safer than those that had not contracted the disease.
Onyekwere explained that if a person had been treated and discharged, there was nothing wrong with the person anymore. [eap_ad_1] “The message about stigmatisation is that if a man has been treated and discharged, there is nothing wrong with him, he is even safer than you and I who haven’t had the disease because he has anti-bodies against the disease,’’ he said.
He said that customers to a woman in restaurant and beer business had stopped patronising her shop at the peak of EVD panic.
Onyekwere said that after his team purposely went to the restaurant to eat and drink, her customers resumed their patronage.
He said that there was a World Health Organisation (WHO) protocol on the use of treating an Ebola patient with the blood of Ebola survivor.
“There is a protocol on that, like the WHO said, it is being worked out, it has not been finalised because if I take your blood and put in mine without cross-matching and make sure, the reaction could even kill me before the Ebola.
“And how much blood will you harvest to use to treat all the people and how many people are infected to give you enough blood to treat other cases that are around, so it is still being studied,’’ he said.
Onyekwere said Rivers did all it could to contain the spread of Ebola in the state, explaining that the government was able to trace about 500 contacts across the state. (NAN)
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