Nigeria 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 said on Thursday.
The doctor had been one of those
involved in the initial treatment of Patrick Sawyer, who collapsed at Lagos
airport on July 20, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told a news conference in
the capital Abuja.
A member of staff of West African
regional economic body ECOWAS this week became the third person in Nigeria to
die of the disease, which has no proven cure and has killed more than 1,000
people across four West African countries.
“Eight (others) are still alive,
more than half of them are doing very well and actually showing signs of
recovery … under treatment,” Chukwu said.
A nurse with Ebola, which she caught
from Sawyer, skipped quarantine in Lagos and headed to her home in the
southeastern city of Enugu, where she was suspected to have had contact with 20
other people.
However, Chukwu said after initial
screening, they realized only six people had been in contact with her, and they
put those six under surveillance.
A total of 169 people were under
surveillance in Lagos, after eight others were cleared, including all of
Sawyer’s primary contacts from when he came in.
The government also announced that
Dangote Group, owned by Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, had donated $150
million to halt the spread of the 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 have contracted the disease.
(Reuters)
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