The Federal Government has confirmed 11 cases of Ebola, after a doctor who treated the Liberian man who brought the disease to Lagos fell ill.
The Health Minister, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, told a news conference in Abuja on Thursday that a medical doctor who had primary contact with the late Patrick Sawyer has been confirmed to have contracted the Ebola virus disease.
A member of staff of West African regional economic body, ECOWAS, this week became the third person in Nigeria to die of the disease.
“Eight (others) are still alive, more than half of them are doing very well and actually showing signs of recovery … under treatment,” Prof Chukwu said.
The Health Minister added that 15 out of the 21 persons under surveillance for Ebola virus in Enugu State, after a nurse who ignored surveillance restrictions fled Lagos to Enugu State, have been cleared and freed by the Ministry of Health.
According to Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, only six out of the 21 earlier placed on surveillance actually had contact with the nurse.
The six, who had contact with the nurse, are now under surveillance with restrictions to movements for 21 days, to see if any would develop the symptoms for the virus.
In all, Nigeria now has 169 persons who had secondary contacts with those being quarantined for developing symptoms of the Ebola virus.
The World Health Organization has called this Ebola outbreak, whose worst affected countries include Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, an international emergency. It has killed around 55 to 60 percent of those who have contracted the disease.
Meanwhile, the Straits Times , a Singapore based newspaper, said on Thursday that a Nigerian woman sent to a Singapore hospital isolation unit does not have Ebola as initially suspected.
The Chief Executive of the government hospital where the woman was sent, Philip Choo, said that it was a false alarm and the woman had been discharged.
The woman, in her 50s, was believed to have flown into Singapore recently and arrived at a hospital emergency department with a fever.
According to the World Health Organisation, the world’s worst outbreak of Ebola has claimed the lives of 1,069 people and there are 1,975 probable and suspected cases, the vast majority in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
There have been no confirmed cases in Asia.
