Fashola addresses reports of Ebola patients being unfairly treated

In a broadcast yesterday August 17th, Lagos
state governor, Raji Fashola debunked reports
of Ebola patients in Lagos state-provided

Isolation wards being maltreated. While
appreciating the concerns of relatives and
friends of the victim, Governor Fashola said
they are receiving the best care health..
"I appreciate the concerns and anxiety
that friends and relatives of sick victims
must be going through. I assure you that
our thoughts and prayers are with you. I
understand that you expect special care
for your loved ones, and this is to be
expected. I assure you that they are
receiving the best care that the experts
have recommended to us, given the
circumstances; because they say that this
is the best way to proceed especially
because experienced personnel in Ebola
containment and management have
always been a challenge" Fashola said.
Read the full text of his broadcast after
the cut...
Dear Lagosians,
As you must now be aware, we are facing
perhaps our biggest challenge to public health
and the safety of human lives at this moment
with the discovery of the Ebola virus in our
state.
This poses a threat to the primary purpose of
our Government whi...ch is to save lives.
This address has become necessary to respond
to a series of text messages, e-mails and
telephone calls that I have received in order to
reiterate some of what you may already know,
to share information about what you may not
know, and to keep everybody safe.
This has become the moreso in the light of
allegations that are making the rounds, either
that victims are being neglected, orthat a
useful drug or vaccine is being rejected or that
there is a shortage of funds.
I wish to state very categorically that none of
these is true.
What is true is that we should perhaps never
have been in this situation, but we are now in
it.
What is true is that the Ebola virus did not
break outfrom within Nigeria, it was imported
into Nigeria.
What is true is that we have followed all the
contacts that we know who have had primary
and secondary contacts with the patient who
imported the virus into our state, or with
people who had contact with him.
Because we had to react to an unexpected
situation, we had to react in a proper and
methodical way, according to acceptable global
health standards.
I can now tell you that in the last one week,
with the help and advice of our technical
partners, such as the World Health
Organisation, the Centre for Disease Control
and the Medecins Sans Frontiers, who have
tracked this virus and studied it for decades,
our response is a lot better than when the
news first broke; and our capacity is increasing
daily.
Although we have suffered very painful losses
of lives, I think it is fair to say that we are not
yet at an epidemic stage and we are
determined to do everything not to get to that
stage; because of the grave consequences to
the safety of human lives.
We have provided information to the public on
all state-owned media, while the private media
have commendably joined in this effort. There
is also information available on the social
media platform.
Since Monday last week, precisely on the 11th
of August, I commenced meetings on an
almost daily basis with stakeholders in our
society, religious leaders, traditional rulers,
market men and women, community
development associations, to brief them of the
risk, to re-assure them that we are daily
gaining control, to advise them and all of you
to be cautious but not to panic.
My view of the fact that we are gaining control,
is informed by verifiable facts that I receive
daily from our health workers that all the cases
of those who have either unfortunately died, or
those who are sick, and those who are contacts
under surveillance are directly traceable to the
imported case.
There is also now the news that a confirmed
victim has fully recovered, which reinforces the
advice from our experts that it is not an
automatic death sentence.
This is encouraging news from which our
containment strategy can profi