EBOLA - We are doing good but we cant afford to relax - Minister

Nigeria's health minister has warned against complacency in the country's fight against Ebola, despite only one patient remaining in hospital with the virus.

Onyebuchi Chukwu announced on Tuesday that two more people had been released from isolation, taking the total number of patients to have been successfully treated to seven. Five people have died in Nigeria since July 25.

But the minister cautioned against congratulatory headlines that suggested the virus had been eradicated in Africa's most populous nation and reports that parties had been thrown to celebrate.

Instead, he said the country was "doing well on containment", likening the situation to trapping a wild animal in a cage.

"Nigeria has been successful at containment. But have we eliminated the disease? No," he told reporters in Abuja.

The World Health Organization has said it was encouraged by the fact that all confirmed cases of Ebola in Nigeria had come from a single chain of transmission and there had been no incidences of the virus outside Lagos.

 Speaking with newsmen in Abuja today, the Minister said the doctor died on Friday Aug. 22nd after treating a diplomat who had direct contact with Patrick Sawyer, the first case of Ebola virus disease in Nigeria. He said laboratory analysis on his corpse showed he died from Ebola.

    "Following the report of his death by the doctor's widow the next day, the case had been thoroughly investigated and laboratory analysis showed that this doctor died from EVD (Ebola Virus Disease" the Minister told reporters in Abuja

He also confirmed to reporters that two people in Port Harcourt have contracted the Ebola disease, the doctor's wife and the diplomat he treated. The wife has been quarantined and the diplomat under surveillance. So Ebola has moved from Lagos to Port Harcourt?

The infected widow of Dr Iyke Enemoah, the Port Harcourt based doctor who died on Friday August 22nd from Ebola Virus Disease in Port Harcourt Rivers state has been moved to Lagos for proper isolation and treatment. Her 3-months old baby is among the 160 people placed under surveillance in Port Harcourt.

Speaking to newsmen yesterday August 29th in Port Harcourt, the state Commissioner for Health, Sampson Parker, said most of those placed under surveillance at the Port Harcourt Isolation center are medical doctors, nurses and patients Dr Enemoah interacted with at his Samsteel Clinic at Rumuokoro, as well as the Green Hart Hospital where he died.


Dr Enemoah passed away at the Green Hart Hospital after been infected with the deadly virus from an ECOWAS diplomat, Olubukun Koye, who he secretly treated at a hotel in Port Harcourt.

Meanwhile it's been discovered that the hotel is Mandate Gardens Hotel in Rumunokoro area in Obio/Akpor LGA of Rivers State. People have been advised to avoid the hotel for the time being - lindaikeji