Widow of Nigeria’s sixth Ebola victim also has virus, says state

Health agents check a passenger leaving Liberia at the Roberts International Airport near Monrovia. Trapped since officials placed them in quarantine two weeks ago, the residents of Dolo Town are becoming increasingly resentful over their incarceration in Liberia’s open “Ebola jail”. PHOTO | AFP

What you need to know:

  • There is a high proportion of doctors, nurses, other healthcare workers who have been infected
  • Of the 15 confirmed cases in Ebola, seven of the patients recovered, the government in Abuja has said.

PORT HARCOURT, Sunday

The widow of a doctor who died from Ebola in Nigeria’s oil city of Port Harcourt has also tested positive for the virus, the state government said on Sunday.

Rivers State health commissioner Sampson Parker said test results showed the woman had the disease, which claimed the life of her husband, Ike Enemuo, on August 22.

Dr Enemuo fell ill and died after treating an official from the ECOWAS regional bloc who travelled to Port Harcourt after having contact with a Liberian man who brought the virus into Nigeria.

The doctor was the sixth to die from the virus in Nigeria and the first outside Lagos, raising fears about the spread of the haemmorhagic fever just as it was thought to have been contained.

Dr Sampson said three patients — another doctor, a pharmacist and a woman who had contact with Dr Enemuo at the hospital where he died — had been taken to a specialist treatment centre outside the city.

Dr Enemuo’s widow was at an isolation unit in Lagos, he added. “They have not been confirmed (as having Ebola) and we are waiting for the result of the investigation,” he told a news conference.

Some 200 primary and secondary contacts have been traced, although about 60 had yet to be spoken to, he added.

None of them had shown symptoms, he said.

“We are concentrating on the names we have to capture in our (monitoring) activities but the good news is that we have been making good progress in checking the spread of Ebola,” he said.

EARLY DETECTION

Parker said early detection and treatment was vital, appealing for anyone who had contact with Enemuo, his clinic, the ECOWAS official or the hotel where he stayed to contact them immediately.

Of the 15 confirmed cases in Ebola, seven of the patients recovered, the government in Abuja has said.

The World Health Organization said last week that more than 120 health workers across the region had died during the “unprecedented” outbreak which began early this year, and more than 240 had been infected.

“The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in west Africa is unprecedented in many ways, including the high proportion of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who have been infected,” the agency said in a statement.

The toll on health workers is all the more the more devastating in the three worst-hit nations — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — where more than 1,500 people have died and where there are just one or two doctors for every 100,000 people.