Despite the scary nature of the Ebola outbreak in the country, a lot of Nigerians are volunteering to help contain the spread of the disease in the country.
The people are responding to an appeal by the Lagos State Government for volunteers to help in the war against the disease.
When Sunday Sun visited the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre located within the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, Lagos, there was a large turn-out of volunteers.
Our reporters observed that as the volunteers poured in, they were attended to every 30 minutes to one hour. During this time, they were usually in groups of five to 10 people.
At such intervals, a middle-aged female official would come out and chat with the volunteers, while also asking questions to test their knowledge and preparedness for the task.
At one of the sessions, the official turned to one of the volunteers, a man in his 40s, and asked him the question he was not prepared for. “Have you told your wife?” and he mumbled something to her.
Then the woman added, “It is just because we don’t want a situation where when you go home now, your family will start running away from you. And when other people hear it, they will also begin to run from you. So, you have to carry your family along,” she explained.
After the conversation, she would then hand them a one-page form to fill. In most cases, the volunteers dispersed after that exercise. But in some instances, you could still see some of them hanging around after filling their forms.
An official of the centre who asked not to be named, told Sunday Sun that the response from the people was heartwarming, stating that it was a show of the African spirit of being one’s brother’s keeper.
The source assured the reporters that they were getting the right kind of volunteers, saying that there were no stringent conditions for accepting volunteers, except that they had to be willing and able to work.
In some cases, the officials had to advise a volunteer to take on a different task other than the one he or she applied for, depending on where they adjudged the volunteer’s skills could be better utilised.
Some of the volunteers, the source said would work at the clinical section (among this group were mainly doctors and nurses), while some others would work at social mobilization (to educate people about Ebola). Yet some others, he said, would engage in contact tracing and screening at points of entry.
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