Four more Ebola patients discharged

Four more people who had tested positive to Ebola have now been discharged from hospital after they fully recovered from the disease.Three of them were medical workers at the Lagos hospital where the Liberian importer of the disease was admitted last month, while the fourth person was a patient at that hospital.This brings the number […]

Four more people who had tested positive to Ebola have now been discharged from hospital after they fully recovered from the disease.
Three of them were medical workers at the Lagos hospital where the Liberian importer of the disease was admitted last month, while the fourth person was a patient at that hospital.
This brings the number of infected Nigerians now free from the deadly Ebola virus disease to five, the Federal Ministry of Health said in Abuja yesterday.
A female doctor who also participated in treating the Liberian man was discharged on Saturday.
Spokesman for Health Minister Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, Mr Dan Nwomeh, said in a statement yesterday that “four additional confirmed cases of Ebola Virus Disease who have been managed successfully and are now disease free have been discharged home today.
“It includes two male medical doctors and one female nurse. The three participated in the treatment of the index case while the fourth person was a female patient at the time the index case was on admission. This brings to five the total number of patients diagnosed with Ebola Virus Disease who have now been discharged from hospital.”
The Liberian man, Patrick Sawyer, arrived in Nigeria on July 20 and was admitted at the First Consultant Hospital in Lagos, where he died four days later.
Several medics who had contact with him later tested positive to Ebola, and were among the nearly 200 people put in isolation.
Two nurses and one other person died of the disease over the past weeks.
There are now three remaining Ebola patients being managed in Lagos.
A total of 12 Ebola cases have been recorded in Nigeria since Sawyer’s arrival.
A Daily Trust correspondent in Lagos reported that the four patients who were discharged yesterday were shielded from journalists while they were leaving the isolation centre at the Mainland Hospital at Yaba.
Lagos Health Commissioner Dr. Jide Idris told reporters that the four were discharged as they are now free of the Ebola disease.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday told authorities in countries affected by Ebola to check people departing at international airports, seaports and major border crossings and stop any with signs of the virus from travelling.
The U.N. health agency reiterated that the risk of getting infected with Ebola on an aircraft was small as infected people are usually too ill to travel, and said that the risk is also very low to travellers in affected countries, namely Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
There was no need for wider travel or trade restrictions, the WHO said in a statement.
“Affected countries are requested to conduct exit screening of all persons at international airports, seaports and major land crossings, for unexplained febrile illness consistent with potential Ebola infection. Any person with an illness consistent with EVD (Ebola Virus Disease) should not be allowed to travel unless the travel is part of an appropriate medical evacuation,” the statement said.
If a traveller has stayed in areas where Ebola cases have been reported recently, he or she should seek medical care at the first sign of illness – fever, headache, sore throat, diarrhoea, vomiting, among other symptoms, the WHO said, noting: “Early treatment can improve prognosis.”
Who urged countries that do not have Ebola cases to strengthen their capacity to detect and contain any cases immediately, but it did not recommend any active screening of arriving passengers.
“It is better if countries do screening on the front-end,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told Reuters news agency.