Nigeria confirms 3 new Ebola case
Health |
The deadly virus has already killed six people in Nigeria.
Nigeria's oil-rich Rivers State announced on Sunday that it had registered three more Ebola infections. "We have three patients at the treatment center," the state's health commissioner Samson Parker told reporters in capital town Port Harcourt.
"The pharmacist at Sam Steel Hospital, the doctor that was working with him and also a lady at Good Heart Hospital," he explained.
The three people all had primary contacts with Dr. Iyke Sam who was declared last week as Nigeria's sixth Ebola fatality.
It was the first Ebola fatality to occur outside the commercial city of Lagos, where all other Ebola infections and fatalities have been recorded.
It raised public fears that the virus might be spreading and cast doubts on earlier government claims that Ebola had been successfully contained in the country.
Sam's wife, who had already shown Ebola-like symptoms, had been brought to Lagos for treatment.
The latest three cases bring the total number of confirmed Ebola infections in Nigeria to 18.
Federal Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu has not commented on the new cases yet.
Six people have already died of the virus while seven have been treated and discharged from hospital.
Nigeria, which has declared Ebola a national health emergency, received its first case of the virus through Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian who was carrying the disease when he snuck onto a Monrovia-Lagos flight.
Sawyer later died in Lagos.
In recent months, Ebola a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure has claimed 1,552 lives in West Africa, mostly in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
The tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the DRC, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.
It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.
"The pharmacist at Sam Steel Hospital, the doctor that was working with him and also a lady at Good Heart Hospital," he explained.
The three people all had primary contacts with Dr. Iyke Sam who was declared last week as Nigeria's sixth Ebola fatality.
It was the first Ebola fatality to occur outside the commercial city of Lagos, where all other Ebola infections and fatalities have been recorded.
It raised public fears that the virus might be spreading and cast doubts on earlier government claims that Ebola had been successfully contained in the country.
Sam's wife, who had already shown Ebola-like symptoms, had been brought to Lagos for treatment.
The latest three cases bring the total number of confirmed Ebola infections in Nigeria to 18.
Federal Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu has not commented on the new cases yet.
Six people have already died of the virus while seven have been treated and discharged from hospital.
Nigeria, which has declared Ebola a national health emergency, received its first case of the virus through Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian who was carrying the disease when he snuck onto a Monrovia-Lagos flight.
Sawyer later died in Lagos.
In recent months, Ebola a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure has claimed 1,552 lives in West Africa, mostly in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
The tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the DRC, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.
It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.
