THE Nigerian health authorities said on
Thursday that they were holding for Ebola testing a South African
national in transit to her country because she was showing potential
symptoms of the disease after working in Guinea and Sierra Leone,
Reuters reported on Thursday.
The
traveller, who lives in Cape Town, filled out a health questionnaire on
her arrival at the airport in which she acknowledged suffering from
diarrhoea and vomiting, both possible symptoms of the Ebola hemorrhagic
virus.
Around 2,300 people have died
so far this year in the worst Ebola outbreak on record, which has mostly
affected Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. It has also reached Nigeria
and Senegal because of sick travellers “importing” the disease.
Democratic Republic of Congo has a separate outbreak.
“This
person has been in Guinea and Sierra Leone since April; she has
symptoms,” the Director of Port Health Services at the Lagos airport,
Dr. Morenike Alex-Okoh, told Reuters.
The testing process will likely last a few days.
Nigeria
has instituted Ebola screening, including infra-red temperature scans
and symptoms checks, at its airports and ports after a
Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, infected with the disease brought it
to Lagos in July. Sawyer had flown in to Nigeria from Liberia. His is
one of seven deaths recorded so far out of 19 confirmed cases in
Nigeria.
“Nigeria cannot afford
another ‘importation’ (of Ebola),” said Dr. Aileen Marty, a professor of
infectious diseases at the Florida International University College of
Medicine.
Marty is working with
Nigerian health authorities, under the auspices of the World Health
Organisation, to maintain port of entry Ebola checks across the country.
She
told Reuters the fact that the South African traveller displayed
several Ebola-like symptoms and had been in the high-risk zone justified
her being treated as a suspected case. But such symptoms are also
present in other diseases, such as malaria and cholera, hence the need
for a specific Ebola test.
