Quarantined Ebola suspects: the need for awareness against stigmatization

Emeka Ibemere

Obviously, it wasn’t going to be easy for the freed and uninfected Ebola virus victims who were recently discharged after completing their quarantine class and were discovered after the 21 days incubation period, that the deadly disease failed to show on their bodies, were left to rejoin their communities, families and colleagues in their working places.

After more than 40 days without EVD, rearing its ugly heads on the bodies of suspected Nigerians, quizzed in the course of trying to prevent the spread of the virus in the country, health authorities in Nigeria discharged the suspected infected people, who apparently had contacts with the primary and secondary indexes of the Ebola disease.

Though, they have asked to go, the after matter of their quarantine experience may begin to hunt them should government and authorities sealed their lips in what may follow after they were discharged.

Why should it be so? – Stigmatization!

For now Nigerians seem to have had their own global stigmatization which has forced the President to call on world leaders to rise against it.

President Goodluck Jonathan knowing the dangers of stigmatising the discharged suspected patients, earlier condemned the stigmatization of Nigerians by some countries and by Nigerians over recent cases of the Ebola Virus Disease in the country.

Special Adviser to the President on Media & Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, said Jonathan spoke at a meeting with Mr. David Navarro, a Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General.

According to Abati, the president particularly flayed the discriminatory actions such as that which forced Nigeria’s team to the Youth Olympics in China to abandon its participation.

The presidential spokesman quoted Mr. Jonathan as noting that there was no justification for such stigmatization of Nigerians since the Ebola Virus Disease had been effectively contained in the country and never attained epidemic levels.

He said the president called for a stop to the discriminatory actions against Nigerians over the virus and urged the UN Secretary General, Mr.  Ban Ki Moon, to support the call.

Abati said Jonathan, while responding to the Secretary General’s commendation of Nigeria’s management of the threat of Ebola, praised the Federal Ministry of Health, the Lagos State Government and all Nigerians for the success achieved so far in containing the virus and avoiding a national epidemic.

“All hands have been on deck to contain the virus here. I commend my team and the Lagos State Government. We have been able to set politics aside and work in unison to deal with a national threat. All other Nigerians have played a part too by complying with the directives and advice we have issued to stop the virus from spreading any further. The success we have had is a testimony to what we can achieve as people if we set aside our differences and work together”, Jonathan was quoted to have said.

“We will continue to monitor the situation and we will also support other affected African countries as much as we can because we cannot be completely safe from the virus as long as it continues to ravage some countries in our sub-region and continent. We will continue to work with the international community to curb the outbreak in other countries”, Jonathan was said to have pledged.

As that wasn’t enough, in Liberia, a doctor named Melvin Korkor, who contracted Ebola virus while attending to patients in his country, but eventually recovered from it after being treated revealed that he still faces stigmatisation.

Korkor narrated his ordeal to FrontPage Africa, and said he was only greeted from a distance upon arrival at Cuttington University campus, a private university in Suacoco, Liberia, where he teaches. He said his students were scared that he might still have the deadly virus, a situation that made people to be afraid to touch him.

One of the students, whose name was not given, was quoted to have said: “We want to hug our doctor, but fear we would come in contact with the virus, I will greet him from a distance. I am happy doctor Korkor has returned, but I am totally not convinced he is Ebola-free. I will shake his hands after 21 days.”

Again few days ago, the World Health Organization, WHO, recently shared a video of three survivors who revealed that, they were issued certificates by their doctors to prove they are no longer contagious because of the stigma they were undergoing in their various communities.

One the survivor was said to have reacted to the stigmatization he was facing and said: “When I got sick, my family doubted my recovery. Thank God for the doctors. They gave me a certificate that indicates I am free of Ebola in case anyone would still doubt.”

However, it is an irony that the American doctors who contracted the deadly virus were treated as heroes in America but down here, their African survivors are faced with stigma and disdain in their own communities.

Information Minister, Labaran Maku also took time to explain that Ebola patients who had been declared free of the virus and discharged cannot spread the disease. Maku while trying to stem the stigmatisation of patients who have survived the disease said.

“They may be healthier than some people; they are more certain that they are free.  They are the safest.  If you want anybody to come to your house, these people are the safest”.

At a briefing in Lagos, the Lagos State, Commissioner of Health, Idris advised residents of Lagos not to panic, stating that getting infected with Ebola was not an automatic death sentence.

“This has been buttressed by the recovery of seven confirmed suspects, who have been re-integrated successfully with their families and communities. The common trend among the recovered cases is their early presentation for supportive treatment.

“There is no need to hide friends and relations we suspect have come down with the disease. The earlier they are brought for screening and surveillance, the better the outcome,” he said.

On the contacts traced so far, the commissioner said the contact-tracing team had screened and tracked a total of 321 contacts in the state alone. He, however, said an additional 10 contacts “were listed on Monday, raising it to 331. Of the number, 159 have been cleared and discharged on completion of the 21-day surveillance”.

He disclosed that there “are 13 confirmed and one suspected case. The suspected case is awaiting the test result to inform the next line of action”. He added that the virus had claimed five patients in total, acknowledging that three of the Ebola victims were cremated and two others buried normally after their bodies were decontaminated in line with international best practices.

Currently, the commissioner said there “are two cases in the isolation ward. Of the two cases, one is confirmed while the other is suspected. Both of them are at the isolation facilities in Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH), Yaba”.

He explained the process by which confirmed, probable and suspected cases are discharged. “The process is in line with global best practices, involving reviews by critical members of the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre,” he explained. Like Chukwu, he urged Lagos residents not to stigmatise victims and contacts, which he said had been given a clean bill of health.

The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, said Nigeria has only one active case of the infectious Ebola virus, remaining in the quarantine centre in Lagos State, before Ebola landed in Rivers State last week.

Giving an update on government’s effort to contain the disease during a press-conference in Abuja, Chukwu said: “Today is the 37th day since the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was imported into Nigeria by a Liberian-American. As of today Nigeria has had 13 cases of EVD, including the index case. “However, seven of the infected persons were successfully managed at the isolation ward in Lagos and have been discharged.

“Two of the treated patients, a male doctor and a female nurse, were discharged (Monday) evening, having satisfied the criteria for discharge. “As I speak with you, Nigeria has only one confirmed case of EVD, a secondary contact of Mr Patrick Sawyer's and spouse of one of the physicians who participated in the management of the index case. She is stable but still undergoing treatment at the isolation ward in Lagos.”

He explained that so far, all the reported cases of Ebola in Nigeria had their roots in the index case, the late Sawyer, adding: “This is an indication that thus far, Nigeria has contained the disease outbreak.”

The minister, however, refused to be drawn into a hasty conclusion that the virus had been completely eradicated in Nigeria, maintaining that it had been contained but not yet eradicated.

“We cannot say we have eradicated the Ebola virus” Chukwu explained, “We can say we have contained it; every case so far have been traced to one source. Secondly, we have kept the disease in one location in Lagos.”

Continuing, Chukwu said: “Excellence is a journey, it is not a destination, as every country of the world remains at risk; every citizen of the world remains at risk.”

Chairman of the Oshodi and Isolo Local government Area of the Nigerian Red Cross, Pastor Celestine Nwosu, cautioned the government not to fold hands allow the discharged quarantined people to suffer psychological and emotional trauma because of stigmatization. He challenged the Federal Government and the Lagos State to legislate a law banning stigmatisation of the quarantined and discharged Ebola ‘patients’ in the country.

According to him, such would make people with the virus to be able to summon courage to go for quarantine class rather than hiding and in the process distribute the disease to others after knowing that people would be running away from them.

Deacon Chinedu Onyeanuforo, described stigmatization as worse than Ebola itself when considered what the stigmatized person would go through. He condemned the act and called on Nigerians to try and reintegrate such people back to their fold hence they have been certified Ebola free.

A sociologists and a businessman, Agboalu Christopher, quipped that Federal government should start serious campaign against stigmatization of ‘ex-Ebola patients’.

Speaking to our correspondent, he said such could help so that their communities and their places of work wouldn’t start discriminating against them. He cited the cases of HIV and Aides who were denied employment and others sacked from their places of work because of their HIV statues and cautioned that such shouldn’t be allowed to happened to alleged quarantined and discharged ‘Ebola suspects’   

It is expected that the Federal government should embark on sensitization and conscientisation awareness programme that would bring the discharged quarantined and discharged Ebola patients together with their communities and enviroment to avoid brutal discrimination that may follow them.

“What they need is an assurance that they are welcomed back into the community. What they need is reintegration and absorption by their people, governments, employers of labour, teachers, students, churches, and mosques and even their clients and customers”, Mrs Christiana Duru stated. “The onus is on the government to let Nigerians know that these people are healthy and Ebola