With Ebola gone, schools resume in Nigeria

LAGOS

Academic activities resumed Monday in schools in at least 13 of Nigeria's 36 states after the African powerhouse claimed to have successfully checked the spread of the Ebola virus, which recently killed at least eight people in the country.

"Teachers have our leave to resume [academic activity] in states where adequate preparations have been made to ensure safety for them and the students," Nigerian Union of Teachers President Michael Alogba told Anadolu Agency.

Lagos and all five states of Nigeria's southwestern region have ordered students back to school, along with five other states nationwide that are resuming classes today.

Class will also resume today in Benue and Kogi states in the central region.

"Some schools are resuming today; others are scheduled to begin from Monday," Alogba said.

Resumption of class is set for Monday in Zamfara State in the northwest and Niger State in the north-central region.

Schools in Nigeria's troubled northeastern Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states, meanwhile, may resume Monday, but no official announcement has been made yet to this effect.

"Governments across the states are meeting with stakeholders before making an announcement, but the Monday date seems likely," a government spokesman who asked not to be named told AA.

The north-central Kwara State has yet to decide when to resume classes, owing to what one official described as the "poor state of hygiene in its schools, most of which do not have water facilities."

Schools in many states resumed class in September as scheduled, albeit with reduced staffs due to the teachers union's directive not to resume until adequate preparations had been made to ensure safety.

Lagos and other states had delayed the resumption of class, partly to allow time for adequate preventive measures to be taken against Ebola and partly for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, which ended Monday.

Nigeria recorded its first case of Ebola on July 20 through a Liberian diplomat, Patrick Sawyer, who flew into the country carrying the virus.

Sawyer later died in a Lagos hospital.

At least seven Nigerians – all of whom had come into contact with the Liberian – subsequently succumbed to the disease.

According to the authorities, Nigeria is now free of the deadly virus, although health officials have warned against official complacency – especially given that the deadly virus continues to claim lives in West Africa.

In recent months, Ebola – a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure – has killed at least 3,431 people in West Africa, including 2,069 in Liberia alone, according to the World Health Organization.

A tropical fever that first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ebola can be transmitted to humans from wild animals. It can also reportedly spread through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the virus.

www.aa.com.tr/en