Many states across the South West Zone are putting in place new strategies to contain any outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease in order to meet Monday's resumption date announced by the Federal Government.
In Oyo State, the Commissioner for Education, Prof. Solomon Olaniyonu, said government and relevant stakeholders had put in place mechanisms to ensure that schools resume on Monday.
Olaniyonu told the News Agency of Nigeria in Ibadan that sensitisation on the disease had been ongoing among the stakeholders.
"Oyo State schools will resume on September 22 as promised because enough sensitisation campaigns has been going on on the disease.
"We have been meeting with all stakeholders including principals, teachers and students," he said.
Olaniyonu also said that his ministry met with the Board of Technical and Vocation Education and the All Nigerian Confederation of Secondary Schools Principals.
The ministry, he added, had deployed top government officials to rural areas to sensitise residents on the disease before resumption of schools.
"If not for the fact that there is no proper demarcation of boundaries, there would have been no fear of Ebola in this state," he said.
He said that the Federal Ministry of Education has requested for the number of schools so that the Federal Government could help out with the facilities needed to fight against Ebola.
Mr. Waheed Olojede, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Union of Teachers in the state, however, told NAN that schools would not resume until adequate measures were in place.
"Until adequate measures are put in place by government to check the spread of the dreaded Ebola virus, no school will resume," he said.He said that apart from the sensitisation exercise carried out by the Ministry of Education, no facility was in place in schools to prevent the spread of the disease.
the President of the All Nigerian Confederation of Secondary Schools Principals in the state, Mrs. Olufunmilayo Ojoawo, said the resumption date was a source of concern to the body.
She also said preventive kits were yet to be put in place in schools to check the disease.
"If an infected EVD child enters the school, it will just spread like wildfire and this will be very bad," she said.
In Ogun, the state government said it had trained no fewer than 12,000 teachers to handle any possible outbreak of Ebola in schools, ahead of Monday's resumption date.
The state Commissioner for Education, Segun Odubela, stated this in an interview with NAN.
Odubela said that the teachers were drawn from public and private primary and secondary schools in the state.
He added that an additional 3,000 teachers would be trained on Thursday.
The commissioner said that the training programme was facilitated by the state Ministry of Health and some private medical practitioners in the state.
He added that the state had also procured preventive and protective gadgets like hand-gloves and sanitisers for use in the schools.
Odubela said that the state government was already liaising with the Federal Ministry of Education for the procurement of infra-red thermometers to check the temperature of students before resumption.
He explained that the government was also making efforts to ensure that there were clean toilets and running water in the schools.
Odubela said that a special desk had been created in the ministry with a dedicated line for issues relating to the disease.
NAN
