As the WHO Ebola Response Team published dire predictions of the west African outbreak in the New England Journal of Medicine, overnight – including an updated 70.8% fatality rate – the Health Minister of Nigeria reports that his country is completely free of active Ebola cases and have today released the final victim contacts from surveillance.
In a telephone interview last night where he was preparing for a United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu, MD, said, “Presently, there is no single case of Ebola virus disease in Nigeria – none.”
Dr. Chukwu provided further details, saying, “No cases are under treatment, no suspected cases. There are no contacts in Lagos that are still under surveillance, having completed a minimum of 21 days of observation.”
In the process of tracing contacts of individuals infected with Ebola, anyone showing no symptoms after three weeks of last known contact with a victim is considered free of any potential for the disease.
Rivers State, whose capital city is Port Hartcourt, had been home to over 400 contacts under medical surveillance. As of last night, only 25 contacts remained.
“None of them are showing any symptoms. Tonight [Mon 22 Sept] will mark the end of their 21 days of observation and the plan is to get them discharged from surveillance tomorrow [Tues 23 Sept].”
“Nigeria will be as clean as any other country as far as Ebola virus disease is concerned.”
PBS TV reporter Fred de Sam Lazaro wrote yesterday from Port Hartcourt, “The story of Ebola in Nigeria is an unusual and frankly rare one about things going right somewhere in Africa.”
“Nigeria’s achievement truly hits home for a television crew working “in the trenches” of a country the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) describes as “hobbled by … insecurity and pervasive corruption,” added Lazaro, who can be found on Twitter @newshourfred.
Indeed, the disease has now been contained in Lagos, a city of 21 million people, and Port Hartcourt, population 1.4 million.
Nigeria is the most populous country on the African continent, with 177 million people, yet only suffered 21 Ebola cases and eight deaths. In contrast, Liberia has just 4.3 million people yet has experienced 2,710 reported cases, with 1,459 deaths (as of 18 September).
Ebola virus was brought to Nigeria when naturalized American and Liberian Ministry of Finance official, Patrick Sawyer, traveled to Lagos for a meeting of the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) in Calabar on July 23.
Sawyer had symptoms of the disease before leaving Liberia and became very ill on the flight, infecting others from ECOWAS who greeted him and at the hospital where he was treated and died two days later.
A contact under quarantine in Lagos for some reason took flight to Port Harcourt, about a seven-hour drive. There, he was treated in secret by Dr. Ikechukwu Enemuo. Both later died.
Enemuo infected others, including his wife and sister. Both were successfully treated and recovered. But authorities had to track 477 contacts in the Port Hartcourt area.
Enemuo infected others, including his wife and sister. Both were successfully treated and recovered. But authorities had to track 477 contacts in the Port Hartcourt area.
Credit to WHO-assigned physicians
The Ebola survivors in Nigeria were not treated with any experimental drugs. Contract tracing and early identification of cases were managed by isolating the patients and replacing fluids and electrolytes. In some cases, blood transfusions were necessary.
Dr. Chukwu had high praise for WHO Director General, Margaret Chan, for sending physicians to Nigeria. “We only knew about Ebola virus through our medical books. We’ve never seen a single case of Ebola virus until this year. So we needed someone with practical experience who had seen the virus to come and train our doctors what to do and the rest, and then we took over.”
“It is important that we let the world know that WHO did well in sending us doctors with practical experience, said Dr. Chukwu. “But we also worked with the CDC, UNICEF, and MSF in managing the disease.”
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