By Daniel Oluwatobiloba Popoola
Frontline doctors hold the key to preventing Nigeria’s next Ebola outbreak, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has warned, as Lagos State First Lady, Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, called for sustained investment in disease surveillance, healthcare infrastructure and emergency preparedness.
The warning and the call were made on Monday, 27 July, 2026 at the opening of the 2026 Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the Nigerian Medical Association, Lagos State Branch. Sanwo-Olu said lessons from the Ebola epidemic, the COVID-19 pandemic and other emerging infectious diseases had shown the need for stronger collaboration, scientific innovation and continuous investment in health.
She noted that healthcare professionals carried enormous responsibility beyond treating illnesses, doubling as educators, researchers, counsellors and innovators, and often forming the first line of defence during emergencies.
She called for continuous investment in their welfare and working conditions, and reaffirmed Lagos State’s commitment to strengthening healthcare infrastructure, digital health innovation, surveillance and emergency response under its THEMES+ agenda.
A healthier, safer society, she added, could only be built through collaboration between government, health professionals, researchers, the private sector and communities.
Delivering the keynote address, NCDC Director-General, Jide Idris, represented by Olukitan Jinadu, warned that Nigeria could not afford complacency despite containing Ebola in 2014, citing rising international travel and the ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo as risks.
He explained that no country could guarantee an infected traveller would never cross its borders, since such a person could travel during the incubation period before symptoms showed.
The goal, he said, must be to prevent importation where possible, and to detect and contain any imported case before it spread.
Cautioning doctors against assuming every fever was malaria, Idris said Ebola often mimicked common febrile illnesses, making early clinical suspicion vital. Patients typically presented with fever, weakness, headache, vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain, symptoms easily mistaken for malaria in the early stages, he said.
He urged healthcare workers to maintain a high index of suspicion, noting that a simple question about travel history or unexplained deaths nearby could determine whether an outbreak was stopped or spread.
Following the World Health Organisation’s declaration of the DR Congo outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, he disclosed, the Federal Government activated the National Emergency Operations Centre, intensified surveillance at ports of entry, updated case definitions, designated isolation centres, strengthened laboratories, stockpiled protective equipment and medicines, and ran simulation exercises to test readiness.
He stressed that no preparedness plan could succeed if healthcare workers failed to recognise and report suspected cases promptly.
Every consultation, he said, was a chance for detection, and a prompt alert could prevent an infection, a hospital shutdown or a community outbreak. Detecting a first case was not failure, he added; failure came when a case was missed, an alert ignored, or a response delayed.
Chairman of the occasion, Prof. Akin Osibogun, described Nigeria’s 2014 containment of Ebola as one of its greatest public health achievements and a model for future outbreaks.
He credited the feat to prompt clinical suspicion, strong political leadership, effective interagency coordination and swift interventions, adding that rising infectious disease threats made it critical for Nigeria to keep strengthening its surveillance, laboratories, response capacity and health workforce.
He recalled that Lagos contained Ebola within three months in 2014, while other affected countries battled it for years, proving that a strengthened, prepared health system could prevent unnecessary deaths. Preparedness, he said, was not a one-off event but a continuous investment in people, systems and rapid response.
Earlier, NMA Lagos State chairman, Dr. Babajide Saheed, said preventing Nigeria’s next Ebola index case required preparedness, not luck, pointing to the 2014 success as proof that sustained, evidence-based measures worked.
He listed stronger border surveillance, improved laboratory capacity, infection prevention and control, community engagement and coordinated governance as key pillars for preventing future outbreaks, and urged governments at all levels to sustain investment in health security, noting that outbreaks could only be contained through coordinated action among policymakers, health professionals, researchers and communities.
