Around 400 persons in Port Harcourt are now being watched for signs of Ebola, Director of the Nigeria Center Control, Dr. Abdulsalami Nasidi, has revealed.
Nasidi disclosed this in Geneva on Thursday in an interview with Reuters.
He noted that after having contact with an Ebola patient and before his own death on August 22, the Port Harcourt doctor, Iyke Enemuo, the first person who died from Ebola in Port Harcourt 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.