The
Nigeria Centre for Disease Control Project Director, 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
said this on Thursday in Geneva, saying that there is a sense of
“hopelessness” due to the lack of proven drugs or vaccines to treat
Ebola that has 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, named by local authorities as 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 have 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 private hospital
that sees everybody.
“That is the only case that effectively escaped our surveillance network. We are paying now for it,” Nasidi said. NOT
He
spoke on the sidelines of a two-day World Health Organisation experts
meeting aimed at speeding development of Ebola drugs and vaccines.
