According to Vanguard, a Liberian man has been hospitalized in Lagos with Ebola-like symptoms, but it is not yet clear if he is infected with the killer virus, Nigerian officials said Thursday.
The 40-year-old Monrovia resident arrived in Nigeria’s mega-city on Sunday and was admitted to hospital on Tuesday suffering from severe vomiting and diarrhea, said Yewande Adesina, the special adviser on health for the Lagos state government.
The Adviser said,
“The patient was detained for possible Ebola infection while blood samples were sent to the Virology Reference Laboratory in Lagos as well as to the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Dakar.”She also added that careful measures were taken as the symptoms are associated with Ebola.
“Results are still pending. Presently the patient’s condition is stable and he is in recovery,”
“The diarrhea and vomiting have stopped. He is still under isolation,” Adesina Added.It is reported that the patient arrived Lagos from Monrovia via Lome, the capital of Togo.
The World Health Organisation, WHO, has recorded more than 900 cases of Ebola in the epidemic that has spread across West Africa recently, but this is the first suspected case to emerge in Nigeria.
Liberia has recorded 172 cases of the disease, including 105 deaths.
The epidemic is the worst-ever since the virus first emerged in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Lagos government has begun rolling out an emergency response in a bid to contain any potential spread of the virus across the congested city of more than 20 million people, with poor sanitation and health infrastructure.
Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever which is deadly in up to 90 percent of cases.
It can fell victims within days, causing severe fever and muscle pain, vomiting and diarrhea — and in some cases, organ failure and unstoppable bleeding.
Ebola is believed to be carried by animals hunted for meat, notably bats.
It spreads among humans via bodily fluids including sweat, meaning you can get sick from simply touching an infected person. With no vaccine, patients believed to have caught the virus must be isolated to prevent further contagion.
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