Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire has said the Federal Government of Nigeria needs a sum of N620m to prevent an outbreak of coronavirus in Nigeria.
The deadly coronavirus which ravaged China has been detected in other countries and the Minister appeared before the Senate Committee on health to brief the panel on what the ministry is doing to prevent an outbreak of the disease in Nigeria.
Enahire said the ministry submitted a memo proposing for the release of the sum of N620m to take proactive measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
He added that the ministry had a multi-stakeholder meeting to deploy port health services to screen all passengers coming into Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the Senate expressed concerns lack of screening of the Chattered flight passengers wing of the local flights that arrived at the airports. The senators said such oversight could lead to the virus being imported into Nigeria.
As a result, the Senate ordered Ehanire to deploy health officials to the private tarmac and conduct screening of VIPs on chartered flights.
