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Abuja, Nigeria | AFP | Nigeria’s football federation says a World Cup warm-up match will be cancelled if doctors advise it, after a fresh outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Super Eagles are due to play DR Congo in a friendly on May 28 in Nigeria’s southern oil city of Port Harcourt, before heading to Russia for the finals in June.
At least 17 people have died from the disease so far in the country’s ninth known outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever since it was first identified in the mid-1970s.
Nigeria’s health ministry on Wednesday ordered emergency measures to be put in place to screen visitors from the DR Congo and neighbouring countries.
One official at the NFF said: “We will stop the game on medical advice because we cannot risk any lives.
“But in the meantime, the visiting team will be fully screened on arrival in the country for the game. Both CAF and FIFA have been informed of the situation.”
Seven people died of Ebola out of 19 confirmed cases in Nigeria in 2014. The country was praised for its response to the disease, which killed at least 11,000 elsewhere in West Africa.
At the time, CAF rescheduled matches for the African Cup of Nations involving the worst-hit nations Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Fans attending a match between Nigeria and the Republic of Congo in September that year were subjected to temperature checks.
