Rivers State Government Sends 3 People to Ebola Treatment Center

The Rivers Commissioner for Health, Sampson Parker, on Sunday in Port Harcourt said three persons have been moved to the state’s treatment centre for observation on the Ebola disease.

Parker told newsmen the patients are a doctor, a pharmacist and a woman who had contact with Dr Ike Enemuo, who died of Ebola on Aug. 22.

Enemuo was a Port Harcourt-based medical practitioner who treated an ECOWAS diplomat with the Ebola virus.

“We now have three patients at the treatment centre which is at Oduoha, Emohua local government area. The centre, which is about 25 kilometres east of Port Harcourt, has the capacity to treat patients.

“The three are a pharmacist at the Sam-Steel Hospital, a doctor who worked with the late Enemuo, and a lady who was at the Good Heart Hospital while Enemuo was there.

“However, they have not been confirmed to have the virus, and we are waiting for the result of investigation (Ebola test),’’ he said.

Parker said while the wife of Enemuo tested positive to Ebola, her condition was stable at a treatment centre in Lagos.

“Also, Enemuo’s three-month-old baby is alive and well,’’ he said.

The commissioner said government had traced 200 persons who had contact with the ECOWAS diplomat who was in Port Harcourt for Ebola treatment and Enemuo who treated him.

“Of this number, we are still to be in touch with about 60 of them. But 50 of them, who are high risk, have been identified. We are still on them and none has shown any symptoms.

“We are concentrating on the names. We have to capture them in our activities. But the good news is that we have been making good progress in checking the spread of Ebola,’’ he said.

Parker said Ebola patients who came out early for treatment at the Lagos centre have survived and had been cleared.

“Only the ones who hid themselves, going from one church to the other until they deteriorated so much, passed on.

“We must let the public know that anyone, in one way or the other, who had  primary or secondary contact with Dr Enemuo or the clinics and the hotel, should voluntarily contact us.

“Their having had contact with those people doesn’t mean that they are infected. All we need is just to observe them, and if there is anything, they should let us know.

“But they have to know that the chances of survival are very high, because all the people who went to the Lagos centre early were treated and cleared,’’ he said.

Parker said the state government had decontaminated a number of places related to those who had come in contact with the Ebola victims.

“These are the clinic of late Dr Enemuo, another clinic where he was treated, the hotel used by Enemuo to treat the ECOWAS diplomat, the morgue at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital and corpses at the morgue,’’ he said.

The commissioner also said the Ebola treatment centre at Oduoha had been decontaminated.