Scores Under Observation For Ebola In Rivers

No fewer than 160 people are going through medical observation in Nigeria's oil-producing hub Port Harcourt in Rivers State after a doctor died from the Ebola virus in the state, health authorities stated on Friday, 29 August, 2014.
Speaking on those being monitored for traces of the Ebola virus during a news conference in Port Harcourt on Friday, Rivers State Health Commissioner, Sampson Parker said:"As of today, none of them has shown symptoms of any kind. We are in touch with them constantly and they also call us to tell us their condition."
It would be recalled that the Nigerian government had announced on Thursday that a doctor, Ikyke Samuel Enuemo, became Nigeria's sixth person to die from the haemorrhagic feverand the first outside the country's biggest city, Lagos.
According to the report, the late doctor fell ill after treating an official from the ECOWAS regional bloc, who travelled to Port Harcourt after coming into contact with a Liberian-American man, late Patrick Sawyer, who brought the virus into Nigeria and died on 25 July, 2014.
It was gathered that the deceased slipped through the surveillance net in Lagos and went to Port Harcourt.
Enuemo's wife, who gave birth only three months ago, is ill with symptoms of the disease and has been placed in quarantine.
Parker informed that she requested to be moved out of Port Harcourt for"emotional reasons"and has been taken to an isolation unit in Lagos for further observation and treatment.
"She is also a doctor. Her three-month-old baby is alive and well. The result of the test conducted on her (for Ebola) is not yet out,"he added.
Rivers state has a quarantine centre at Oduoha, about 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of the city as well as a special isolation ward for Ebola patients at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH).
Neither has received any patient, Parker said.
A mobile laboratory has arrived in the city while the hotel where the ECOWAS official was treated has been decontaminated, as have the hospital where Enuemo was treated, his house and the morgue at UPTH.
According to latest statement from health authorities, six people have so died from the Ebola disease in Nigeria.
Specialists from the World Health Organization, WHO, the United States and Britain are reported to have joined experts from the Nigerian government in Rivers State to check the spread of the virus.
Port Harcourt is the centre of Nigeria's oil industry and is home to a number of oil majors, including Anglo-Dutch giant Shell, France's Total and US firm Chevron.