This is the first death related to the disease reported from outside Lagos
Samuel Okocha
September 3, 2014: Last week, Nigeria reported its first Ebola death outside Lagos. A doctor died of the disease in the southern oil-rich city of Port Harcourt. The doctor was treating an Ebola patient who escaped quarantine from Lagos. The patient survived, but the doctor died.
“Two other contacts of the late Port Harcourt doctor, one of the doctors who managed him and a pharmacy technician working in the doctor’s hospital, are symptomatic and have been admitted to the isolation ward in Rivers,” Nigeria’s health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told newspersons on Monday. That brings the country’s total confirmed infections to 16, with around 200 people under surveillance, according to the health minister.
Before this incident, Nigerian health authorities announced that they had successfully contained the outbreak. The UN also commended Nigeria over its tackling of the problem.
In Liberia, President Johnson Sirleaf warned the crisis will likely worsen in the coming weeks, as the ministry of health reported 11 new cases and 35 deaths. New cases of infection have also been reported in Guinea and Sierra Leone.
More than 1,550 people have now died, with more than 3,000 confirmed cases — mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Senegal recently confirmed a first case of Ebola after an infected student who has lost three family members to the disease arrived from neighbouring Guinea. Senegalese authorities are now monitoring everyone who was in contact with the young man who had defied a border closure to cross into the country by road. This case makes Senegal the fifth country affected by the Ebola outbreak.
Last week, West Africa’s health ministers concluded a meeting in Ghana with a call on member states to re-open their borders and end flight bans put in place to stop the spread of Ebola. The health ministers believe excessive travel restrictions will have a negative effect on the economy of the sub-region. They also appealed to airlines to resume operations to Ebola-affected countries to ensure availability of supplies and personnel to contain the spread of the deadly disease.
Meanwhile, the WHO is investigating an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are 24 suspected cases and 13 deaths, according to the UN health body. Reports say the outbreak is unrelated to the one in West Africa.
Earlier Report: Ebola ruins summer of Africa