The Federal Government on Thursday announced that it has put in place life insurance policy for health workers that will be involved in the treatment of the patients of the Ebola Virus Disease.
This was announced by the Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, while briefing representatives of foreign missions in the country on the measures being taken to contain the disease.
The deadly Ebola virus disease has so far claimed two lives in the country, a Nigerian nurse who attended to the first victim, Patrick Sawyer, from Liberia, who imported the virus into Lagos.
As part of the measures, Chukwu said from next week, all outbound passengers would henceforth be screened before leaving the country.
According to him: “We are facing some challenges because we need to encourage workers, especially when they hear that some doctors and nurses are dying even now in Nigeria, a nurse has died.
“It has now become increasingly difficult to convince health workers to attend to these patients, but we have to and we are making effort to get people.
“We have also improved their confidence level.
“What we have decided is that all the people taking part, even if they did not have insurance before, they must have insurance.
“This one is not indemnity for now alone.
“It is life insurance to protect them and their families so that in case anything happens to them, their families will not suffer double loss.
“So, that is mandatory and the Head of Civil Service of the Federation for all federal workers and all the people we will recruit whether private, state or federal personnel are going to enjoy this insurance.”
On the screening of outbound passengers, Chukwu said: “I believe by next week, we will start.
“We are trying to get personnel in place.
“We have the equipment but we need more personnel.
“It is not easy screening at all the airports.
“So we are trying to fill that gap.
“The kind of help we mean is for instance, if you have an airline that is flying from country A and it is their airline, we can say, ok, we will give you some staff to do it with them.”
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