Ebola: Prisons boss raises the alarm

Nigeria Prisons Services (NPS) has said over 55,939 inmates in its custody risked contracting the deadly Ebola virus unless urgent steps are taken to address the deplorable conditions in the nation’s prisons.
Besides, the Acting Comptroller General of Prisons, Aminu Suley, who raised the alarm yesterday, in Abuja, expressed the need for the provision of thermal scanners before inmates get into prison and the prison gate lodges, including personal protective equipment for officers on court escort duties.
He spoke at a one-day stakeholder’s forum organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on adopting appropriate strategies to prevent the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Nigerian prisons.
This is even as the forum has urged the National Assembly to work out modalities to prevent Ebola virus from getting into the nation’s prisons.
The meeting, which was well attended by stakeholders, observed with great concern, the danger posed by the disease to the Nigerian population if it found its way into the prisons.
It noted that the prisons’ population apart from being a captive audience that did not have the liberty to stay out of contaminated areas or persons, were usually held in congested cells with low-level infrastructural development.
It was also the resolution of the meeting that the Federal Minister of Health should immediately further engage other state Commissioners of Health including the FCT to work out areas of collaboration aimed at preventing the entry of Ebola virus into the Nigerian Prison system.
Earlier in his speech, the Acting Comptroller of Prisons, Aminu Suley called for the reconstruction of all damaged septic tanks and soak-away pits and improvement in the general sanitation and hygiene in the prisons communities-through the provision of portable water, food hygiene and total elimination of bucket latrine system of sewage disposal.

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