Yewande Adeshina, special adviser on public
health to the Lagos state government, speaks with Reuters in her office
after a news conference on suspected outbreak of Ebola virus in Lagos,
July 24, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye
LAGOS, NIGERIA (REUTERS) - A
Liberian man who died in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos on Friday
tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, Health Minister Onyebuchi
Chukwu said.
Patrick Sawyer, a
consultant for the Liberian finance ministry in his 40s, collapsed on
Sunday after flying into Lagos, a city of 21 million people, and was
taken from the airport and put in isolation in a local hospital. Nigeria
confirmed earlier on Friday that he had died in quarantine.
"His
blood sample was taken to the advance laboratory at the Lagos
university teaching hospital, which confirmed the diagnosis of the Ebola
virus disease in the patient," Chukwu told a press conference on
Friday. "This result was corroborated by other laboratories outside
Nigeria."
However, at a
separate press conference held by the Lagos state government at the same
time, the city's health commissioner, Jide Idris, said that they were
only "assuming that it was Ebola" because they were "waiting for a
confirmative test to double check" from a laboratory in Dakar.
Paul
Garwood, spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva,
said the U.N. health agency was also still waiting for test results.
"We're still waiting for laboratory-confirmed results as to whether he died of Ebola or not," he said.
It could not be immediately determined why there was a contradiction in the comments from central government and city officials.
If
confirmed, the man would be the first case on record of one of the
world's deadliest diseases in Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy and with
170 million people, its most populous country. Ebola has killed 660
people across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since it was first
diagnosed in February.
Sawyer was quarantined on arrival and had not entered the city, a Nigerian official told Reuters.
"While he was quarantined he passed away. Everyone who has had contact with him has been quarantined," the official said.
Liberia's finance minister Amara Konneh said Sawyer was a consultant for the country's finance ministry.
"Our understanding is that the cause of death was Ebola," Konneh told Reuters.
The
victim's sister had died of the virus three weeks previously, and the
degree of contact between the two was being investigated by Liberian
health ministry officials, he said.
Earlier
on Friday, WHO spokesman Paul Garwood said: "I understand that he was
vomiting and he then turned himself over basically, he made it known
that he wasn't feeling well. Nigerian health authorities took him and
put him in isolation."
Nigeria
has some of the continent's least adequate healthcare infrastructure,
despite access to billions of dollars of oil money as Africa's biggest
producer of crude.
Some officials think the disease is easier to contain in cities than in remote rural areas.
"The
fear of spread within a dense population would be offset by better
healthcare and a willingness to use it, easier contact tracing and, I
assume for an urban population, less risky funerary and family rites,"
Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading in
Britain, said.
"It would be contained more easily than in rural populations."
There
have been 1,093 Ebola cases to date in West Africa's first outbreak,
including the 660 who have died, according to the WHO.
(Reporting by Tom Miles; Additional reporting by
Tim Cocks and Oludare Mayowa in Lagos, Kate Holtan in London, Clair MacDougall in Monrovia,
Emma Farge in Dakar and
Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Stephanie Nebehay and Tim Cocks; Editing by Susan Fenton and
Sonya Hepinstall)
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