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Thursday 28 August 2014

It Is Official: Nigeria Confirms Ebola death In Port Harcourt




Nigeria has confirmed its first Ebola death outside Lagos – a doctor in the oil hub of Port Harcourt.

A further 70 people are under surveillance in the city, while his wife has been put under quarantine.

The doctor had treated a patient, who later recovered, who had met Patrick Sawyer, the man who took Ebola from Liberia to Nigeria.

Health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the medic died on August 22 after treating a patient who had contact with a Liberian-American man, who brought the virus into Nigeria and died in a Lagos hospital on July 25.




“Following the report of this 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),” he told reporters in Abuja.

West Africa's health ministers are meeting later to discuss how to tackle the world's most deadly Ebola outbreak.

More than 1,400 people have died - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Nigeria's Health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the Port Harcourt doctor had died on 22 August, but the results of the tests have only just been made public.

The doctor becomes the sixth fatality in Nigeria, which is Africa's most populous country.


On Wednesday, Nigeria announced that schools would not reopen after holidays until 13 October in order to try and contain the disease.

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