Postponing school resumption not advised -FG

The Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, has advised against postponing the school resumption day saying that it would not help to safeguard the children from the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).

This is even as the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), on September 8, faulted the September 22 resumption date.

The minister, while briefing newsmen, yesterday, at the Emergency Operating Centre (EOC), Yaba Lagos, explained that children still had contact at the market, mosques and churches. He said, therefore, that one could not really prevent children from interacting with one another.

His words: “You will notice that Nigeria has not closed any market. And everyday, churches and mosques are opened. So how do you now monitor the children?”

He however advised all schools to always be on alert and call the Ebola help line if an EVD case is suspected.

While encouraging people not to stigmatise any EVD case, he said, “quarantine does not mean criminalization, so people should not be afraid of being quarantined.

It means we want to screen you or test you. Right now EVD’s case in Nigeria remains 19, with 12 already discharged and death case, 7” According to him, there is no active case of EVD in Nigeria although Nigeria is still tracing contact cases, “as long as there is one case anywhere in the world, the whole world is at risk.”

Reacting to the threats strike issued by Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), the minister blamed it on the salary payment structure on ground which allows the payment of salary despite abstinence from work.

His word: “If the structure is that of ‘no work and no pay’, then the issue of incessant strike will be curbed”.

Tweet