Three people have
been taken to the Ebola
Virus Disease
quarantine centre at
Oduoha, Emohua Local
Government Area of
Rivers State.
The State Commissioner for Health, Sampson Parker, made
this known on Sunday just as the Federal Government said
another emergency meeting of the National Council of
Health over the EVD would hold in Abuja today. The last
meeting took place on August 11, 2014.
Parker, who addressed journalists, said those quarantined
were a doctor, a pharmacist and a woman who came into
contact with Dr. Iyke Enemuo, who died of the virus in Port
Harcourt on August 22.
The pharmacist and the doctor are members of staff of Sam
Steel Hospital while the nurse worked at the Good Heart
Hospital where Enemuo died.
Sam Steel Hospital was founded by Enemuo, who contracted
Ebola while treating an ECOWAS diplomat, Koye Olu-Ibukun,
who travelled to Port Harcourt after coming into contact with
the Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer. Sawyer died from
the virus in Nigeria.
He said, “They (pharmacist, nurse and doctor) have not been
confirmed (as having Ebola) and we are waiting for the
result of the investigation today (Sunday.”
Parker, who as of 8pm on Sunday had not made the
outcome of the tests public, also confirmed that Enemuo’s
widow was at the isolation centre in Lagos where she is
receiving treatment having tested positive to the virus.
Some 200 primary and secondary contacts have been
traced, although about 60 had yet to be spoken to, he
added. None of them had shown symptoms.
He said, “I have been telling you before now that almost 200
persons have been line-traced. Out of this number, we are
still to be in touch with about 60 of them.
“But 50 high risk contacts have been identified. Because of
stigma and the rest of them, these persons are not coming
up but we are still on them.
“We are concentrating on the names we have to capture in
our (monitoring) activities but the good news is that we have
been making good progress in checking the spread of
Ebola.”
When one of our correspondents visited the quarantine
centre on Saturday, he noticed that it was undergoing
reconstruction.
As of 11am on Saturday when he left, no single patient
had been brought there.
When informed of this development, Parker replied, “I am
briefing you now. Operations are by the minute. They are
three there now. They won’t let you into the centre now. That
place is restricted. Probably when you went there, there
were none, but I am telling you now that I was there when
they were being brought in.”
The commissioner said Governor Rotimi Amaechi would
meet with religious leaders today and traditional rulers in
the state on Tuesday.
He counselled the people that Ebola was not a death
sentence, stressing that those who came into contact with
Enemuo and Koye should come up early for screening.
Parker said, “People should know that Ebola is not a death
sentence and that they should come out. I must tell you that
in Lagos, most of them that came up early survived. Only the
ones that were going from one church to the other until
their case degenerated, died.
“We must let the public know that any one that came into
contact with primary and secondary contacts to Dr. Enemuo
or the clinics and the hotel should voluntarily contact us. It
does not mean they are infected. All we need is just to
observe them.
“Chances of survival are very high. It is very important the
members of the public know this so that we do not waste
time looking for people who are hiding. We know some
persons are hiding but we are advising them to come out.
“Some of them are running into churches and most of them
are laying hands on them without knowing.
“People should please check their level of anointing before
they do that. This is a strong advice for pastors.”
Parker also said the movement of corpses within and
outside Rivers State would be supervised henceforth.
He said people must have the death certificates to enable
the government to ascertain the cause of the death of their
loved ones.
“People cannot just move corpses here and there without
clearance with the Ministry of Health. In fact, the police
could stop you and ask for your clearance. Before corpses
are released from the mortuary, the attendants must
demand clearance documents.”
The commissioner said the University of Port Harcourt
Teaching Hospital, Sam Steel Hospital, Mandate Hotels and
Good Heart Hospital had been decontaminated.
He added that the state now had a mobile laboratory for
testing people.
NCH holds another emergency meeting today
Meanwhile, the NCH will meet again today in Abuja to
“review the situation, preparedness by states and ascertain
their compliance with the recommendation of the last
meeting” on containing the Ebola outbreak in the country.
The Special Assistant, Media and Communications, to the
Minister of Health, Dan Nwomeh, and the Kogi State
Commissioner for Health, Dr. Omede Idris confirmed the
meeting.
“The meeting will hold on Monday at Barcelona Hotel,
Wuse,” said Nwomeh. He however did not state the agenda
of the meeting.
The NCH comprises the minister of Health, state
commissioners for health. Except in an emergency, the
council meets once in a year.
Our correspondents gathered that the meeting was
convened to discuss the implementation of some of the
decisions reached at the August 11, 2014 parley,
particularly the directive on transport of corpses and how
those who died of EVD should be handled.
The council, had at the meeting, directed state governments
to institutionalise communication strategies to ensure mass
awareness and sensitisation for individuals and
communities on EVD.
It also directed that particular attention be paid to
vulnerable groups such as market women and other women
groups, patent medicine vendors, road transport workers,
fishermen , hunters and bushmeat sellers, schoolchildren,
morticians and mortuary attendants, traditional healers and
faith based groups.
The NCH directed the Federal Government to make whole
body scanners available at designated ports of entry.
It stated that the Federal Government should assist states to
establish isolation tents.
NMA investigates dead doctor
In Jos, the Plateau State chapter of the Nigerian Medical
Association has launched an investigation to determine if
Enemuo “is a true professional or a quack.”
Its Chairman in the state, Dr. Bokop Bupwatda, said an
initial investigation had revealed that the late doctor
graduated from the University of Jos Teaching Hospital.
It described Enemuo’s action as “unethical” and added that
no doctor worth his salt would do what he did.
The state NMA said, “We heard that Dr Enemuo graduated
from the University of Jos and we are investigating him to
see if we can expunge his name posthumously from the
records of doctors that graduated from Jos.
“What he did was bad because he did that at the expense of
not only his life, but also the lives of others who possibly
might have come into contact with Olu-Ibukun all the way
from Lagos to Port Harcourt. Whatever might have been his
fees is not worth the loss of his life and the risk he has put
others to. So we are investigating whether he is a true
professional or a quack.
“He has to be sanctioned even though he is dead and all
those involved, including the diplomat must also be
sanctioned because they have messed up all the efforts the
Federal Government has been doing to contain the spread
to only Lagos and manage the situation.”
However, resident doctors at the JUTH, who were reluctant
to resume duties following the suspension of strike by the
NMA, are back to work.
‘Hold Jonathan responsible if EVD cases worsen’
Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress has said Nigerians
must hold President Goodluck Jonathan personally
responsible if Ebola spreads more than it has done in the
country.
The party said that the President failed to stop a rally in his
support in Port Harcourt on Saturday, despite warning from
individuals and groups.
The APC, in a statement issued on Sunday by its National
Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said never before
had a President of a country sabotaged his administration’s
policy and endangered the lives of his compatriots as
Jonathan had done on the Ebola issue.
It said the same President, who declared a national
emergency on Ebola and advised against large gatherings to
prevent the spread of the virus, was the first to flout his own
advice by failing to stop the rally by the Transformation
Ambassadors of Nigeria in Port Harcourt.
The party noted that the rally was held a few days after the
virus was detected in the city and at a time that contact
tracing was going on to find all those who might have come
into contact with the medical doctor victim of the disease.
The party stated, ‘‘On the altar of political desperation,
President Jonathan put the lives of Nigerians in danger. In
order to realise his ambition for re-election, President
Jonathan has shown he is ready to sacrifice as many lives of
Nigerians as possible. There goes the President’s statement
that his political ambition is not worth the blood of any
Nigerian. This President simply says what he doesn’t mean.”
Efforts by one of our correspondents to get the response of
the President’s spokesman, Dr. Ruben Abati, to the APC’s
statement failed as calls to his mobile telephone line did not
go through.
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