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 on Monday(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.
The Health commissioner 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.
The commissioner 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 on Monday (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 on
Monday(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 tomorrow (today)
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 onions could 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.
