“Never promote complacency” – Dr. Oketta cautions Liberians

The head of the African Union support to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Major General Dr. Julius F. Oketta, has warned Liberians never to promote complacency until Liberia begins to announce zero cases.

Dr. Oketta said that the African Union has started social mobilization in eight counties in Liberia to win over the minds of community residents to accept that the virus does exist and they should turn over any Ebola suspected patients.

According to him, the AU is trading people from one county to another to avoid the spread of the virus. He also said that they have assigned eight persons to the Guinean border; nine to the Liberian border and more to Sierra Leone border. He said that the African Union is undergoing transition training for every Doctor with eight Doctors deployed at the John F. Kennedy hospital in Sinkor, Monrovia.

The Federal Republic of Nigeria is sending a group of 150 volunteer health care professionals to Liberia that will include Medical Epidemiologist, Field Epidemiologist, Physicians, Nurses, Laboratory Technologist, Laboratory Scientist, Data Managers, and Psycho- social professionals.

The group is coming under the sponsorship of the African Union Support to Ebola outbreak in West Africa or ASEOWA will be led by Dr. Joshua Obasanya of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control or CDC.

Dr. Obasanya is the Deputy Head of Mission for ASEOWA, directly working under Major General Dr. Oketta. He will be in charge of the ASEOWA team in Liberia. Therefore, Dr. Obasanya was part of the group of experts that effectively eradicated the Ebola disease in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian volunteers will be in Liberia for three months, during which time, it is believed that the disease will be contained, treated and eradicated across the country. Their mandate includes local capacity building and aiding in the restoration of full medical services to the JFK Medical Center in Monrovia.