Fifteen people have been quarantined after coming into contact with a patient who died of Ebola-like symptoms in the southern Nigerian city of Calabar. This happened a year after the country was declared free of the deadly disease by World Health Organization
A patient came to the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital on Wednesday with symptoms consistent with the viral hemorrhagic fever, staff there said. “We have sent blood samples for testing and quarantined identified contacts,” the hospital’s chief medical director, Queeneth Kalu, said. Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said 15 people were in quarantine.
Any confirmed case would cause major concern across the region, where experts had hoped they were finally emerging from the worst epidemic of the disease on record.
The three West African countries at the heart of the epidemic – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – had just recorded their first week with no new cases since the outbreak was declared in March 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
Dr Sunday Omini, Director of Public Health in the state Ministry of Health, said: “We are aware of the situation and we have got preliminary reports from the hospital, and we are all awaiting the result of the blood samples. “But, judging from the information I have received so far, I am 90 per cent sure that it is not Ebola. “‘However, we are on top of the situation; there is no cause for alarm,’’ he said. The management of UCTH said it had informed the NCDC, the Federal Ministry of Health and the state government about the development.
The Ebola virus arrived in Nigeria in July 20 last year when travelling Liberian businessman Patrick Sawyer collapsed in a Lagos airport. But the country was declared Ebola free in October last year.
