Nigeria’s efforts to contain the deadly
Ebola virus have suffered a major setback with the news that another
medical doctor has been killed by the disease in Port Harcourt, Rivers
State.
The news was announced by the Minister of Health, Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu, at a news conference in Abuja on Thursday.
Although Chukwu did not give the identity of the doctor, the Rivers State Government said he is Iyke Enemuo.
Enemuo was said to have contracted the
virus from an Economic Community of West African States diplomat while
allegedly treating him of Ebola symptoms in a hotel in Port Harcourt.
It was gathered that Enemuo, before he
took ill on Tuesday “operated on a woman on Monday presumably after
treating the diplomat.”
A resident of the city said on her
Facebook page that the doctor’s widow, who was quarantined alongside
the diplomat, had a three-month-old baby.
The ECOWAS official whose name was also
not given by Chukwu, was said to have had contact with the index case in
Nigeria (Patrick Sawyer). He was placed under surveillance in Lagos but
he escaped to Port Harcourt where he checked into a hotel and
contacted Enemuo for treatment.
The official recovered from the ailment
and returned to Lagos. Health workers were said to have tested him when
he allegedly came for a clearance certificate and gave him a clean bill
of health.
The minister said following a test
conducted on the corpse of Enemuo which showed that he died of the
EVD, Health ministry officials placed 70 people who came into
contact with him either when he was sick or touched his corpse, under
surveillance.
But the Rivers State Government said
“about 100 contacts from a hotel, patients of Dr. Enemuo and patients of
the hospital where Enemuo was treated until his demise have been
identified and restricted.’’
Chukwu told journalists that Enemuo’s death had increased the number of deaths recorded as a result of the EVD to six.
He explained that even though the ECOWAS
official did not presently have the EVD, further laboratory tests
indicated that he had suffered the deadly disease before travelling to
the oil-rich city.
Chukwu said, “This case (ECOWAS
official) would have been of no further interest since he had completed
the 21 days of surveillance without any other issue, but for the fact
that the doctor who treated him died last Friday, August 22, 2014.
“Following the report of this death by
the doctor’s widow the next day, the case had been thoroughly
investigated and laboratory analysis showed that this doctor died from
EVD.
“As a result, several contacts have now
been traced, registered and placed under surveillance. However, because
the widow is now symptomatic, she has been quarantined pending the
outcome of laboratory tests on her.”
The minister added that the Incident
Management Committee had already deployed a very strong team in Port
Harcourt to work with the Rivers State’s health authorities.
He assured Nigerians that “just like the
situation has effectively been managed in Lagos and Enugu, the
situation in Port Harcourt will also similarly be effectively managed
and we have begun to do so.’’
He said, “The doctor’s blood sample
tested positive after death. Also, 70 persons have been placed under
surveillance in Port Harcourt.
“I want to charge the residents of Port
Harcourt not to panic over this situation as the experience we have
gathered from Lagos and Enugu respectively indicate that there is no
cause for alarm when you have the government fully in control of the
situation.
“Once again, we appeal to all contacts
under surveillance to abide by the advice given to them by the Incident
Management Committee.
“With regard to Enugu, all secondary
contacts will be followed up till tomorrow (Friday) when they are all
expected to be discharged from our surveillance.
He maintained that the total number of
cases treated at the isolation ward in Lagos stood at 13 while the total
number of those discharged was seven.
The minister added that the only person currently under treatment at the isolation ward was stable and improving clinically.
Also at the news conference, the
Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, appealed to Nigerians under
surveillance to respect the advice of medical personnel pending when
they would receive a clean bill of health to travel.
But in Port Hourcourt where some
residents feared that many people who came into contact with Enemuo
and the ECOWAS official might have gone underground, the state
government said it acted proactively by placing about 100 persons under
surveillance.
A statement by the Rivers State’s
Commissioner for Health, Dr. Sampson Parker, quoted Governor Rotimi
Amaechi as urging “every Rivers State citizen and resident to remain
calm and go about their normal business.”
The statement read in part, “it is with a
heavy heart that I announce to you that the Ebola virus has claimed its
first victim in Rivers State.
Dr. Iyke Sam Enemuo died last week Friday, August 22, 2014 as a result of what was suspected to be EVD.
The Rivers State Ministry of Health on
becoming aware of the conditions of his death, immediately commenced
investigations and contact tracing.
“As of today (Thursday), about 100
contacts from a hotel, patients of Dr. Enemuo and patients of the
hospital where the Enemuo was treated until his demise have been
identified and restricted in Rivers State. The locations are being
decontaminated.
“From our investigations, some facts
have emerged. A member of staff of ECOWAS on the team that received the
late Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American diplomat, who died of
Ebola in Lagos, made a trip to Port Harcourt where he checked into a
hotel and met with Dr. Enemuo.
“About a week after his departure,
Enemuo took ill and was rushed to a hospital where he presented with
symptoms of fever, diarrhea and vomiting.
“In the course of treatment, the
managing physician became suspicious and took samples for investigation.
A few days after, Enemuo died on August 22, 2014. His body was
deposited in a mortuary in Port Harcourt.
“Enemuo’s widow, who is also a medical doctor and who cared for him during his illness, has taken ill. She is being quarantined.
‘‘A few hours ago, results of the test carried out on samples taken from Dr. Enemuo came back and was positive of EVD.”
A resident of Port Harcourt, said in her Facebook post, that the latest development was a calamity.
“It’s quite a calamity unfolding in Port
Harcourt. Unfortunately, the city’s health facilities are not quite
ready to contain Ebola at the moment,” she lamented.
The resident said Enemuo, before he took ill on Tuesday, “operated on a woman on Monday presumably after treating the diplomat.”
She wrote, “He (Enemuo) fell ill next
day Tuesday and died last Friday. No one knew about the hotel angle
which was a very big risk he took…and unethical thing to do.
“He was ill for three days and then
started vomiting blood. He was first rushed to one hospital where he was
rejected and then taken to Good Heart Hospital whose owner is a
Cardiologist and a consultant physician with the University of Port
Harcourt Teaching Hospital . He died there.
“The doctor that died practises in East
West Road, Rumuokoro…Sam Steel clinic. The wife, also a doctor, has a
three-month-old baby.
“As it is, there may have been well over
200 contacts of this devilish diplomat who lured his young doctor
friend to treat him secretly and went back to Lagos. We have to look at
the health workers in the Good Heart Hospital, Sam Steel Clinic, the
members of staff of the hotel and its guests, those who travelled with
the diplomat in the same vehicle(s) or aircraft from Lagos to Port
Harcourt, the late doctor’s family members. The list goes on and on.”
The resident ,who is an educationist,
added that what played out in this latest development was what she
called the “Ostrich mentality of our people.”
She said, “My own take is what is with
the foolishness of people who suspect they have Ebola not wanting to
subject themselves to straight testing. Don’t they know quick detection
could save their lives and those of others?”
Another resident said she was
particularly worried that Ebola had reached Port Harcourt, a city where
according to her, social and economic activities are very high.
He said, “Look, I am troubled that this
virus in here with us. I am disturbed because I know this state cannot
easily trace people who came into contact with the so-called diplomat
and the doctor that died.
“I fear that many of the contacts must
have travelled to neighbouring states like Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa,
Delta and even Cross River State.”
Sahara Reporters said on
Thursday that Good Heart Hospital, and the hotel where the ECOWAS
diplomat allegedly received treatment in Port Harcourt, had been shut
down.
However, a member of the Emergency
Operation Centre for Ebola in Lagos, Prof. Oyewale Tomori, has argued
that the Federal Government and the Lagos State government should not be
blamed for the death of the medical doctor in Port Harcourt.
Tomori told one of our correspondents on
Thursday that some of the people who had had primary contact with
Sawyer, did not cooperate with the monitoring and surveillance committee
by evading surveillance.
He said, “Initially many people who came
into contact with Sawyer were not forthcoming with the truth. It was
difficult to trace some contacts who did not leave any address. They
could not trace the ECOWAS diplomat for days. Surveillance is the duty
of everyone. And we must follow international guidelines and regulation.
If we take your temperature and say we will be back tomorrow by 8am to
take another, we expect that you should cooperate, but that was not the
case.
“Some even travelled, and their people
were also not ready to disclose where they went. Some even denied the
degree of contact that they had with Sawyer.”
Tomori who is also a professor of
virology noted that though there were no sanctions yet for those who
evade surveillance, such individuals pose great health risk to the
nation.
To further contain the outbreak, Tomori
advised doctors to treat every case of high fever, vomiting and stooling
as a suspected case of Ebola.
He added, “I will say with the new
dimension, doctors should assume the worst when they see patients with
high fever who are vomiting and stooling. Those with three symptoms of
the disease must be put under observation and isolated, while waiting
for a test result.
“It is important that we get
laboratories where test results can be out within two or three hours.
That way you can quickly isolate and begin taking necessary precautions
to contain it within the health facility.”
US to begin human testing of Ebola vaccine
Meanwhile, United States researchers
will next week start testing humans with an experimental vaccine to
prevent the Ebola virus.
The National Institute of Health
announced on Thursday that it was launching the safety trial on a
vaccine developed by the agency’s National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases and GlaxoSmithKline.
It will test 20 healthy adult volunteers to see if the virus is safe and triggers an adequate response in their immune systems.
That testing, according to the Associated Press,
will be at NIH’s campus in Bethesda, Maryland. Later in September, NIH
and a British team will test the vaccine on volunteers in the United
Kingdom, Gambia and Mali.
American health officials are also talking about a future trial in Nigeria.
Ebola cases could reach 20,000 – WHO
In Geneva, Switzerland, the World Health
Organisation said on Thursday that the current Ebola outbreak in West
Africa could exceed 20,000 cases, more than six times as many as are now
known.
A new plan by the United Nations health
agency to stop Ebola assumes that the actual number of cases in many
hard-hit areas may be two to four times higher than currently reported.
If that is accurate, it suggests there
could be up to 12,000 cases already,out of which 1,552 people are dead
in West Africa alone.
“This far outstrips any historic Ebola
outbreak in numbers. The largest outbreak in the past was about 400
cases,” Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s assistant director-general for
emergency operations, told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland.
