Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu on Monday disclosed that the outbreak of COVID-19 could have been prevented had the world heeded repeated warnings of an impending pandemic.

Ihekweazu made the statement at an ongoing virtual summit titled “COVID-19: Facts, Myths & Way Forward” jointly held by the Nigeria Academy of Pharmacy and Nigerian Guild of Editors.

He stated that frequent warnings about an impending potential pandemic sounded like a science fiction to many people across the world.

“We have been warning for years on a potential pandemic. These warnings were not taken seriously around the world especially by our political leadership.

“It sounded like science fiction and even when we got it on the cover of magazines like ‘Time,’ it was still difficult for countries to devote their thinking space and resources for events like this,” he said.

According to the NCDC director, until 14 months ago, only few people have heard about NCDC.

“The challenge really is how do we as leaders make critical decisions and prioritise things that may not always be on front pages of our newspapers. For a disease that did not exist 14 months ago, COVID-19 has claimed over 3 million lives.

“We cannot really say we haven’t been warned in Nigeria. To be honest, we have faced a series of public health outbreaks from Ebola (2014), polio (2016), meningitis and chicken pox (2017), Lassa fever (2019) and COVID-19 (2020),” he said.

Ihekweazu state that whenever a pandemic occurs, people always think about things of less priority like the elite, governance structure, political class and believe some groups somewhere like the World Health Organisation will manage it till it quietly goes away.

“But this time, COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us rich or poor. We have a responsibility to ensure we are better prepared for the future. We cannot do this on our own. In fact, the entirety of government cannot do it alone.

“Strong collaboration is absolutely necessary for the response and now in the future. We have seen the private sector come today through CACOVID. What we want to do in NCDC is be the centre that pools all the sources together on behalf of the country,” he said.