Nigeria president: How we beat Ebola

While a number of West African countries confronted the Ebola epidemic, Nigeria was particularly at risk due to its proximity and extensive borders and ports.

The global toll from Ebola was significant and sobering: 8,000 souls lost and tens of thousands of others infected. While the crisis continues in several countries – including Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — Nigeria implemented a coordinated emergency management strategy that treated those infected quickly, identified and monitored those in contact with the disease, and perhaps most important, educated our citizens about the risks and effects of Ebola. The result was the complete eradication of Ebola in Nigeria just weeks after it was discovered.

On Sunday, the World Health Organization will hold a special meeting on the response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and we plan to share what we've learned. I believe my nation's response and the best practices developed by my Ministry of Health can help put in place a model approach to address future outbreaks of infectious diseases.

First, a coordinated plan is important, but flexibility is crucial.

Last July, when a Liberian man tested positive for Ebola in Lagos, our most populated city with 21 million citizens, we knew our response had to be swift and far-reaching to prevent a massive death toll. We immediately established a command center to manage the nation's response.

Nigeria had long had a contagious disease response plan on file, but had never had to mobilize it, so we needed to adjust to unforeseen circumstances. For example, our government's health infrastructure lacked the necessary numbers of specially trained medical staffs to deal with this crisis, so we instituted a program that offered non-government doctors and nurses' financial incentives, such as life insurance. This attracted the qualified, brave men and women necessary for comprehensive care.

When it became clear the disease epicenter might have shifted from Lagos to Port Harcourt, we moved our command center there, while keeping senior health officials in Lagos to continue managing initial outbreak response. This ensured the same approach working in Lagos would be implemented in Port Harcourt.

Second, aggressive controls of borders and ports and monitoring of potential victims is necessary. This policy has drawn criticism because it is labor intensive and sometimes invasive to communities, but given the many points of entry to our country and the sheer density of cities like Lagos, these procedures are ultimately the reason why Nigeria has, unlike its neighbors thus far, stamped out the virus.

Without taking this step, we risked losing touch with those who had potentially contracted the virus and ensured that those potentially infected did not have contact with the general population. People showing symptoms upon arrival to Nigeria were quickly moved to treatment wards. More broadly, we identified all those who came into contact with Ebola-positive patients, provided each with a thermometer, educated them on the symptoms and the importance of being quarantined and monitored. We set up a daily monitoring protocol, keeping meticulous records for each individual for 21 days, at which point a person was determined to be clear of the virus.

Third, transparency and technology are crucial tools.

Nigeria greatly depends on mobile communications. The vast majority of our population uses smartphones to communicate and access the Internet. It was important that our strategy utilize these tools to educate our people about Ebola and our efforts to contain the spread of the disease.

Through a website that was easily accessible via mobile, we kept our citizens informed in real time. Being as transparent as possible, we could dispel the natural inclination for rumors and inaccuracies to spread. To that end, we also closely monitored our media – TV, radio and the Internet, including social networks like Facebook – and quickly responded to and corrected inaccurate information. Any future Ebola response should absolutely use mobile technologies that can incorporate location-based services, information sharing and health-care monitoring.

Finally, national responses must include international groups so that best practices can be learned, shared and deployed in real time.

Nigeria's Ebola response would not have been as successful without the coordinated efforts of partner organizations. Welcoming outside expertise has been a challenge for some countries, but this collaboration with organizations such as the WHO, UNICEF and Doctors without Borders was key to being able to declare the country Ebola-free within 12 weeks of the initial outbreak.

Our approach gave each partner a role in the Ebola team that met daily and made strategic and tactical decisions, removing potential bottlenecks and implementing a highly efficient response. To date, the death toll from Ebola in Nigeria stands at eight victims, a number unsatisfactory in the cost of a human life, but far lower than any other African country.

As this deadly outbreak continues, all efforts must be taken by the international community to see best practices from Nigeria's successful model are shared and incorporated in others nations' responses to this devastating virus. We look forward to working with our partners to make 2015 the year that Africa is declared Ebola-free.

Goodluck Jonathan is president of Nigeria.

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