Abuja – Nigeria’s Federal Government has requested for the experimental drugs being developed for the treatment of the deadly Ebola virus, by the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in order to prevent an outbreak of the disease, following the death of some medical workers in Lagos, the commercial capital.

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The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, disclosed this to State House correspondents on Wednesday in Abuja, the capital city after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by Vice-President Namadi Sambo.

Chukwu said that he was in constant communication with the director of the centre with a view to getting the drugs to try on Nigerians already infected by the disease.

“We are doing everything possible; this morning I sent an email to the Director of the U.S. Centre for Disease Control; we have been in communication in the last 36 hours by e-mails as well as talking.

“And I asked that ‘we are getting report that the experimental drug seems to be useful, is it also possible that we can have access for our own people who are presently being treated under isolation’.

“We are making efforts, we are relating with them and we are doing everything possible to ensure that we contain this disease.

“But it is serious; it is an emergency, but with the cooperation of all with government leading, and God blessing our efforts, we shall contain it,“ he said.

The minister stated that as at Wednesday morning, five Nigerians were confirmed to have contacted the disease and were being treated at an isolation ward in Lagos.

Also addressing the correspondents, the Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, emphasised that all the country needed do to contain the virus was being done professionally at the level of government.

He, therefore, solicited public support and cooperation in containing the spread of the disease.

“Every effort that this country should make is being made, both from the point of view of specialist intervention from the Ministries of Health and Communication; we are putting all into practice.

“But we need public cooperation, this is important for the country and for public health,” Maku said.

The Director of CDC, Dr Thomas Frieden, had said on Sunday that the American doctor who contracted the Ebola Virus in West Africa seemed to have improved after he was treated with the experimental drug.

The Ebola virus was first reported in the country, after a 40-year old Liberian official, Patrick Sawyer, was admitted in a Lagos hospital where he later died of the disease in Lagos endangering the female nurse and other medical staff that attended to him.

The Liberian official was transported to the hospital from the airport after he took ill suddenly, on his way to attend an ECOWAS meeting in Calabar, the Cross-River State capital, in Nigeria’s Southern region.

At a media briefing also held today in Lagos, the Health Commissioner Idris stated that the situation was “extremely dire.” as four of the eight blood samples of admitted persons have tested positive to the virus.