The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control Projector, Dr. Abdulsalami Nasidi, has said that the health ministry is monitoring about 400 people in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, for signs of Ebola after they came in contact with a Port Harcourt doctor who died of the disease but hid the fact that he had been exposed.
Nasidi, who said this on Thursday in Geneva, noted that there was a sense of “hopelessness” due to the lack of proven drugs or vaccines to treat Ebola that had infected 18 people in the country.
In an interview with Reuters, he said that more isolation wards were being opened in the oil industry hub but voiced confidence that there would not be “many cases” there.
After having contact with an Ebola patient and before his own death on August 22, the Port Harcourt doctor, Iyke Enemuo, carried on treating patients and met scores of friends, relatives and medics, leaving about 60 of them at high risk of infection.
The doctor’s wife, who is also a physician, and a patient in the same hospital had been infected with Ebola.
“Everything about this doctor was in secrecy, he violated our public health laws by treating a patient with a highly pathogenic agent who revealed to him that he had contact with Ebola and didn’t want to be treated in Lagos because he might be put in isolation.
“He treated him in secrecy outside hospital premises. When he became ill he did not reveal to his colleagues that he had contact with someone who contracted Ebola. He was taken to General Hospital, a public hospital that sees everybody.
“That is the only case that effectively escaped our surveillance network. We are paying now for it,” Nasidi said.
He spoke on the sidelines of a two-day World Health Organisation experts meeting aimed at speeding development of Ebola drugs and vaccines.
“People are living in a state of hopelessness seeing the disease has no cure and no vaccine but has great potential to spread,” Nasidi said.
Nasidi said the Port Harcourt doctor was visited by friends and family in hospital, including some who “laid hands” on him.
“As we are talking now, we have more than 380 of such contacts in our dragnet,” he said. Those at high risk are being quarantined, and some 500 volunteers and health care workers are checking on all exposed people twice a day,” he said.
A 28-bed isolation ward for Ebola patients has opened in Port Harcourt, which is home to many expatriate workers in major international oil companies, but authorities did not forecast many more cases, Nasidi said.
He said most of the exposed contacts were near the end of the 21-incubation period for the disease, which starts with fever and muscle pain, followed by vomiting and diarrhoea.
“So we are monitoring and are sure we shan’t miss out on any contacts that come out with infection that could be transmitted. A contact, who has no symptoms doesn’t transmit even if he has the virus. So this is why we are hopeful,” he said. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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Mr. Chukwu should be held responsible since he kept on lying 'til the case in Port Harcourt was disclosed.
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