One of the nurses that attended to the Liberian Ebola victim, Patrick Sawyer, is dead. The female nurse who was yet to be named died on Tuesday at Obalande Lagos. She is the first known Nigerian to die of the virus.
Sawyer died on July 25, few days after his arrival in the country. He was sighted at the airport with signs of the virus at the point of entry into the country.He was quickly isolated and a test conducted on him later confirmed that he had Ebola.
The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, confirmed this to journalists in Abuja Wednesday morning.
Prof. Onyebuchi had on Monday disclosed that the 70 people who had contact with the Liberian are under surveillance. Out of this figure, eight are already under quarantine.
Briefing journalist on the latest development, the minister also said that five other cases are currently being treated at the isolation ward in Lagos.
Onyebuchi said, “Yesterday, 5th August, 2014, the first known Nigerian to die of the EVD was recorded and this was one of the nurses that attended to the Liberian.
“The other five cases are currently being treated at the isolation ward in Lagos.”
He said all the Nigerians diagnosed with Ebola were primary contacts of the index case ─ the late Sawyer.
“The 24/7 emergency operations centre will be fully functional tomorrow. It will be headed by Dr Faisal Shuaibu as the incident manager.
“He will later today lead a six-man inter-agency team drawn from the National Primary Health Care Development Agency and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Lagos to complete the setting up of the centre,” he added.
They will be joined by the other personnel from Lagos State government and the federal hospitals in the Lagos area as well as the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
“We are making arrangements to procure isolation tents to quicken the pace of providing isolation wards in all states of the federation and the federal capital territory.
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