In July 2014 when the news of an Ebola infected Liberian diplomat who had entered Nigeria went out, there was a mental and emotional pandemonium in the minds of Nigerians. Convoluted questions like - Who would be next? What will happen to Nigeria? How will it spread? Who will be affected? Can we get over it? Amongst others, passed through the tunnels of the minds of Nigerian citizens. It didn’t help that information about the disease was relatively miscommunicated leading everyone to walk around in fear.
The Nigeria attack came more than 3 months after the outbreak of the virus in other West African countries such as Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and only went to show how impressionable we can be as a people and how much of an epidemic the virus was turning out to be. Reported cases in other parts of the world also enabled world Health authorities to consider how susceptible this epidemic was to becoming pandemic.
WHO declared Nigeria Ebola free on the 20th of October 2014 and the scourge has come under control in the various affected countries but the African Union is committed to wiping out even the remotest trace of the scourge. A ‘United Against Ebola’ campaign was created and Africa’s leading telecommunication – MTN, is leading the pack by galvanising its over 219 million subscribers in Africa and the Middle East to be part of this fight against this dreaded virus.
You too can be a part of the campaign to stop Ebola by sending Stop Ebola to 7979 on your MTN line.
