As part of efforts to prevent the spread of the Ebola Virus disease into the country, a Federal and Lagos State Health Delegation, on Sunday visited Temitope Joshua, the general overseer of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, to explore ways of preventing him from encouraging Ebola victims from other countries to visit his church for miracles.
Led by Jide Idris, the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, the delegation offered to work with the health team of the church in the areas of technical assistance, medical advice and training to ensure that no victim of the deadly disease comes to the Church from any of the affected countries undetected.
Idris said, “The delegation decided to pay the visit to the Church because of the recognition that the Church is an International Christian Centre whose congregation comprise of people from all over the world including the countries of the West African sub-Region which have already been affected by the Ebola disease.”
He added that the visit is one of the Government’s strategy of sensitizing faith-based organizations on the need to cooperate with the government to prevent the spread of the disease in the country by educating their adherents to escalate health issues to medical experts.
Pointing out that the Federal and the Lagos State Government are working hard on how to prevent a spread of the virus into the country, Idris said the delegation felt that because the Church has some people from the West African sub-Region as members and because of the influx and population of the congregation there might be need to check and also raise the awareness level on the disease in the church.
In furtherance, Abdulsalami Nasidi, Director, Centre for Disease Control, said the visit was also both to inform the Synagogue Leader of the deadliness of the Ebola Virus and to ensure that it does not escape into the country adding that it has become such a big problem in the sub-Region that it is already affecting the economies of the countries involved.
On what the delegation intends to do, Nasidi explained that there are experts from the World Health Organization, WHO, the United Nations Children’s Education Fund, UNICEF, and other international experts to give guidelines, materials and technical expertise on how to ensure that the disease does not spread into the country.
Responding, Joshua promised to work with the Government to ensure that the disease does not spread into the country saying he would put some measures in place to ensure that people from the already affected countries do not enter Nigeria.
He also promised to suspend some of his major Church healing programmes for a few weeks adding, “I am ready to work with you. I love my country and I will be ready to work with you.”
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