EBOLA ALERT : Ebola: First Rivers patient dies ... DailyPost

The first confirmed Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, case in Rivers State of whom the victim was among the three persons quarantined in Oduoha, Emohua Local Government Area, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, has died of the disease.

The death of the patient- elderly woman brings to seven Ebola fatalities to have been recorded in the country, and the first death in the new Port Harcourt isolation centre for Ebola.

Reports say the deceased shared the same room with late Dr. Iyke Enemuo, the doctor who treated the Nigerian ECOWAS diplomat, Koye Olu-Ibukun at the Good Heart Hospital, Port Harcourt, prior to the former’s death from EVD.

It would be recalled that the late woman was quarantined alongside a doctor and a pharmacist, who were staff of Sam Steel Clinic, a health facility founded by late Enemuo. But, consequent upon several tests ran on the duo, it was discovered that they were free from Ebola thus granted a clean bill of health.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, while presenting an update on the status of EVD in the country, disclosed that the eighth Ebola patients successfully managed in the Lagos isolation centre were discharged Tuesday.

Chukwu, who gave the number of cases successfully managed and discharged in the country as eight, pointed out that the last case to be discharged, (the eighth case) was the first secondary contact to be diagnosed, adding that the patient is a spouse of a primary contact of the index (first) case.

His words, “Total number of cases successfully managed and discharged is now eight. The last case to be discharged, the first secondary contact to be diagnosed and a spouse of a primary contact of the index case went home from the isolation ward in Lagos yesterday (Tuesday). The ninth survivor is the ECOWAS Commission official who jumped surveillance in Lagos and traveled to Port Harcourt where he infected the doctor who attended to him.”

The Minister is however yet to confirm the latest report about the first death recorded in the new Port Harcourt isolation centre.