Doctor dies of Ebola virus in Port Harcourt ---- Health Minister
(Nigeria )
The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, on Thursday said a Nigerian
medical doctor has died of Ebola virus in Port Harcourt ,
Rivers State .
Lagos by which time he
was found to be without symptoms.
Chukwu told a news conference in Abuja that ``this primary
contact of Mr Sawyer’s evaded our surveillance team in the last week of July
2014 and travelled out of Lagos to Port Harcourt.
``He consulted with a doctor and was apparently treated for
some symptoms. After four days, following a manhunt for him, he returned to
``This case would have been of no further interest since he
had completed the 21 days of surveillance without any issue, but for the fact
that the doctor who treated him died last Friday, August 22.
``Following the report of this death by the doctor’s widow
the next day, the case had been thoroughly investigated and laboratory analysis
showed that this doctor died of Ebola’’, he said.
The minister said the number of deaths arising from Ebola in
Nigeria
was now six. ``Lagos
had 13 cases, seven were treated and discharged.’’
Chukwu said because the widow was symptomatic, she had been
quarantined pending the outcome of laboratory tests.
He said as a result, several contacts had been traced,
registered and placed under surveillance.
The minister said Incident Management Committee had already
deployed a team to Port Harcourt
to work with the health authorities.
Chukwu stressed that just like the situation was effectively
managed in Lagos and Enugu ,
the situation in Port Harcourt
would also be managed.
He appealed to all contacts under surveillance to abide by
the advice given to them by the Incident Management Committee.
The Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, urged
Nigerians to cooperate with the authority in combating the disease.
``We can only defeat the disease with citizens’ cooperation.
We appeal to those under surveillance to please abide by the rule, do not
travel,: he said.
Maku urged Nigerians not to relent in observing and
maintaining good hygiene practices, stressing that it was disastrous to assume
that the disease had been contained so one would not contract it again.
He urged the media to re-enforce the awareness of the
disease as it was a continuous fight and that nobody should take hygiene
practices for granted.
``Dealing with an epidemic has to do with education. A lot
of the work has to do with the media, we are very important frontier fighters,”
he said.
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