Yellow Fever kills 16 persons in Ebonyi State

• Experts Blame EIDs On Ecosystem Disruption
Ebonyi State government yesterday said that not less than 16 persons have been confirmed dead and dozens still in critical conditions following the outbreak of yellow fever.

Confirming the deaths to journalists in Abakaliki, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Chris Achi, said the incident took place in Ndungele community, Izzi Council, noting that the news came to him through a native.

He told newsmen that mysterious deaths had been occurring in the area, adding that before now the ministry had sensitised the people in rural areas to notify them when they experience strange things.

Achi advised residents to make use of health facilities in each of the 171 political wards in the state.

Meanwhile, medical experts have attributed the recurrence of Emerging Infectious Diseases (EIDs) to the inability of government to control the disruption of the ecosystem through human activities.

The experts stated this yesterday during the 5th African Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity organised by Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium (GET) in Abuja.

GET principal investigator, Prof. Akin Abayomi, noted that Africa had been destroying the ecosystem through the felling the forests, causing animals to move out of the forest into the human communities.

Shrinking natural resources, he said, is creating human competition for water leading to demographic conflict.

The don stressed the need for government to spend more on health care delivery research and creation of awareness, lamenting the lag between what government should be spending and what is being spent.

The chief operating officer, GET, Dr. Dotun Babadoye, lamented that the impact of changing climate and the increasing security challenges in Africa were having a combined effect on EIDs and biosecurity threat in the continent.