The Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu announced that four additional confirmed cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) who have been managed successfully are now disease-free and have been discharged home today.
It includes two male medical doctors and one female nurse. The three participated in the treatment of the index case while the fourth person was a female patient at the time the index case was on admission. This brings to five the total number of patients diagnosed with Ebola Virus Disease who have now been discharged from hospital.
Following fear and anxiety the lethality of the Ebola outbreak has generated since it came into the country through late Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American on July 20, 2014, Nigeria is racing to halt EVD from spreading, including tracing individuals known to have had contact with confirmed cases, training health care professionals to identify EVD, and raising public awareness of EVD symptoms.
This cheery news comes as contact tracing in Nigeria has resulted in a range between 94 percent and 98 percent of contacts of EVD cases being identified and followed-up, according to the World Health Organsation (WHO).
With Nigeria recording 12 confirmed EVD cases , this development comes as a relief and provides a window to wipe out the disease before it gets out of control, as it has in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone claiming 1, 066 lives and 1, 963 EVD cases confirmed since the outbreak began in December 2013.
Alexander Cheijina
