A nurse, who had previously had contact with the Liberian Ebola patient Patrick Sawyer while he was at the First Consultants Hospital in Lagos, has fled quarantine in Lagos and returned to her home in Enugu.
This risky decision, and her resulting contact with 20 other people, has put the Enugu State government on high alert, ChannelTV reports.
Minister of Information Labaran Maku has disclosed that the nurse and the 20 people she was in contact with are currently under surveillance in Enugu.
Three poeple have so far died from the disease in Nigeria; Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American businessman who collapsed in Lagos, an attending nurse, and an ECOWAS staffer who helped Sawyer while he was in Lagos.
According to Mr Maku, 198 Nigerians have been traced to have contacted the virus. While 177 are in Lagos, 21 persons in Enugu are being watched.
The FEC devoted this week’s meeting to the efforts being made to combat the Ebola Virus which entered Nigeria some 23 days ago and had been declared a National Emergency.
At the meeting, the Minister of Health, Dr Onyebuchi Chukwu, told the council that Nigerians had been on the alert even before late Sawyer entered Lagos with the virus.
He told reporters that he was in touch with all the Commissioners for Health and that the Governors of the 36 states and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory had been called for a meeting with the President, an indication that the government was taking the case serious.
He said a committee had been set up to handle the claims by many Nigerians that they have a cure for the ailment and called on Nigerians not to panic, as the government was in touch with the rest of the world on the possible cure for the disease.
The Nigerian government had requested for an untested drug, Zmapp, believed to be efficient in the treatment of Ebola virus from the United States but had not gotten any concrete response.
On Tuesday, the World Health Organization supported the use of untested drugs for the treatment of the disease, which the Nigerian government said its outbreak was a National Emergency.
As part of efforts to contain the disease, which had claimed three lives in Lagos State, President Goodluck Jonathan had set up an intervention plan with 1.9 billion Naira approved for the control of the disease.
The Federal Government had urged those who had primary contact with the index patient to report themselves so that they could be quarantined.
They have to stop doing this, it will only make the situation worse.
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