Four new Ebola cases in Nigeria, all related to American who brought virus there

Four new Ebola cases in Nigeria, all related to American who brought virus there

By Lenny Bernstein and Caelainn Hogan August 8 at 1:12 PM

Update: 5:15: Kent Brantly, one of the two Americans infected by the Ebola virus in Liberia, said in an open letter Friday that “I am growing stronger every day and I want to thank God for his mercy as I have wrestled with this terrible disease.”

In the letter posted by Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian relief organization that sent him to Liberia, Brantly recalled that “I held the hands of countless individuals as this terrible disease took their lives away from them. I witnessed the horror firsthand, and I can still remember every face and name.

“When I started feeling ill on that Wednesday morning, I immediately isolated myself until the test confirmed my diagnosis three days later,” he continued. “When the result was positive, I remember a deep sense of peace that was beyond all understanding. God was reminding me of what He had taught me years ago, that He will give me everything I need to be faithful to Him.”

Brantly is recovering at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where he was airlifted after falling gravely ill with the disease that is spreading out of control in West Africa. Another missionary from the group, Nancy Writebol, is also in that hospital.

Update: 3:40 p.m.: Nigeria’s president declared containment of the Ebola virus a national emergency Friday after the health ministry announced two more confirmed cases, according to the Associated Press. President Goodluck Jonathan also approved the release of $11.7 million to establish more isolation centers, beef up screening at borders and deploy more personnel.

The president asked the public not to spread false information that could lead to “mass hysteria, panic and misdirection,” including unsubstantiated suggestions about the “prevention, treatment, cure and spread of the virus,” a spokesman said.

The World Health Organization reported four new cases of Ebola in Nigeria Friday, all of them among health care workers and others who had contact with American consultant Patrick Sawyer, a spokesman said.

“They’re all contacts of Patrick Sawyer,” said Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the WHO in Geneva. He said all are health care workers, cleaners or others at the hospital where Sawyer was taken after he collapsed in the airport following a flight from Liberia to Nigeria. “We know that he had contact with very few people at the airport,” Hartl said.

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The images and reports from Liberia, hard hit by a historic Ebola outbreak, are starting to recall scenes from post-apocalyptic films such as “Contagion” and “World War Z.”

Sawyer and a nurse two peopleinvolved in treating him have died.
The new cases bring the total number of probable or suspected cases in Nigeria to 13, according to the new WHO statistics released Friday. Any spread beyond the transmission chain started by Sawyer in Lagos, a city of 21 million, or Nigeria, a country of perhaps 175 million, would be cause for great concern, but officials are hopeful that has not occurred. Contacts of the people who have fallen ill also are being traced, Hartl said, but Ebola is not contagious until its victims begin to show symptoms, such as high fever.

The new Nigerian cases were reported on Aug. 5 and 6, according to the WHO, when a total of 68 new cases and 29 deaths occurred in the four affected West African countries.

The Nigerian ambassador to the United States, Adebowale Ibidapo Adefuye, said that there have been no Ebola cases outside Lagos. He said that committees of doctors and experts have been set up by the government to respond, and those suspected of having the virus will be quarantined.

“It’s natural to be worried, but we’re confident that the measures being taken by the government will contain it,” Adefuye said Friday, urging Nigerians not to be panicked by rumors.

According to the WHO, there are now 1,779 cases of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, including 961 deaths.

In other developments:
• The WHO declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa an international public health emergency Friday, recommending strict monitoring of travelers in the four stricken countries. It said emergency efforts should be put under the direct command of heads of state.

In nations that do not border the affected area, the WHO recommended no general travel ban, but said governments should be prepared to “detect, investigate, and manage Ebola cases,” including “the capacity to manage travelers originating from known Ebola-infected areas who arrive at international airports or major land crossing points with unexplained febrile illness.” It also urged countries to be prepared to evacuate their citizens, mainly health care workers, who have been exposed to the virus.

Canadian drugmaker Tekmira Pharmaceuticals said Thursday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had removed a “clinical hold” it had placed on the company’s experimental Ebola drug, potentially clearing the way for its use in patients battling the lethal virus.

The company has a $140 million contract with the U.S. government to develop its TKM-Ebola drug, which had shown promising results in treating non-human primates. The drug had been progressing through the FDA approval process until last month, when the agency halted a trial of the drug to seek more information about its safety.

Another experimental drug, ZMapp, manufactured by a San Diego company, was given to U.S. missionaries Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol who contracted the virus while aiding victims in Liberia. It is too early to determine whether the cocktail of antibodies, never tested on humans, may have helped the pair survive. Both have been brought back to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta where they continue to improve slowly, according to reports.

The government and private companies have said they are ramping up efforts to produce more than the handful of doses currently available, but that effort could take months. The WHO is convening a panel of medical ethicists next week to discuss use of untested treatments in the outbreak, the worst ever.

Brady Dennis contributed to this report.
Read more:
‘Even if they don’t believe officials, please call your people in the villages. Ebola is real.’

Can we give that experimental Ebola drug to dying West Africans?

Why you’re not going to get Ebola in the U.S.

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Patrick Sawyer had dual citizenship and was a Liberian Diplomat. Interesting that he is a Liberian Diplomat until he intentionally transmits Ebola and then he is an "American".

Ebola In Nigeria: How Patrick Sawyer Knowingly Imported Ebola Into Nigeria [Full Story]

Posted by: Information Nigeria on August 7, 2014

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Liberian Diplomat Patrick Sawyer, the man credited with ‘importing’ Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) to Nigeria, ‘knew he was sick’ with the virus before entry to Nigeria. He was also advised by the Liberian Health Ministry not to travel out of the country but he ignored the instruction, flew to Nigeria and died here transmitting the virus to Nigerian medical personnel who offered medical services to him.

AllAfrica.com gives a very detailed tale of how the Liberian American Patrick Sawyer acted before and after he was diagnosed with Ebola, please read this story and share it:

Barely 24 hours before his death, Patrick Sawyer had a rather strange – and in the words of medical and diplomatic sources here, “Indiscipline” encounter with nurses and health workers at First Consultants Hospital in Obalende, one of the most crowded parts of Lagos, a population of some 21 million inhabitants, FrontPageAfrica has learned.


Looking to get to the bottom of Sawyer’s strange ailment on the Asky Airline flight, which Sawyer transferred on in Togo, hospital officials say, he was tested for both malaria and HIV AIDS. However, when both tests came back negative, he was then asked whether he had made contact with any person with the Ebola Virus, to which Sawyer denied. Sawyer’s sister, Princess had died of the deadly virus on Monday, July 7, 2014 at the Catholic Hospital in Monrovia. On Friday, July 25, 2014, 18 days later, Sawyer died in Lagos.

Back in Lagos, authorities at the First Consultants Hospital in Obalende decided that despite Sawyer’s denial, they would test him for Ebola, due to the fact that he had just arrived from Liberia, where there has been an outbreak of the disease with more than 100 deaths.


The hospital issued a statement this week stating that Sawyer was quarantined immediately after he was discovered to have been infected with the deadly virus. In addition, a barrier nursing was implemented around Sawyer and the Lagos State Ministry of Health was immediately notified. Hospital authorities also requested the Federal Ministry of Health for additional laboratory test based on its suspicion of Ebola.


FrontPageAfrica has now learned that upon being told he had Ebola, Mr. Sawyer went into a rage, denying and objecting to the opinion of the medical experts. “He was so adamant and difficult that he took the tubes from his body and took off his pants and urinated on the health workers, forcing them to flee.

The hospital would later report that it resisted immense pressure to let out Sawyer from its hospital against the insistence from some higher-ups and conference organizers that he had a key role to play at the ECOWAS convention in Calabar, the Cross River State capital. In fact, FrontPageAfrica has been informed that officials in Monrovia were in negotiations with ECOWAS to have Sawyer flown back to Liberia.
A text message in possession of FrontPageAfrica from the ECOWAS Ambassador in Liberia, responding to a senior GoL official reads: Your Excellency, the disease control department of the Federal Ministry of Health just contacted me through the hospital now, insisting that Mr. Sawyer be evacuated for now. Pls advise urgently.”


LUTH Lab positive on Ebola
First Consultants said that it then went further to reach senior officials in the Office of the Secretary of Health of the USA who assisted it with contacts at the Centre for Disease Control and W.H.O Regional Laboratory Centre in Senegal. According to the hospital, the initial results from LUTH laboratory showed a signal of possible Ebola virus, but required confirmation.


The First Consultants statement noted that it was able to obtain confirmation of Ebola virus disease, (Zaire strain) after working with the state, federal and international agencies. Sawyer was pronounced dead at 6:50 AM Nigeria time, on July 25 and all agencies were properly notified.


Once the case was officially confirmed, the hospital was temporarily shut down and in-house patients immediately evacuated. Sawyer’s body was subsequently cremated under W.H.O guidelines and witnessed by all appropriate agencies, according to the hospital statement. “In keeping with W.H.O guidelines, the hospital is shut down briefly as full decontamination exercise is currently in progress. The re-opening of the hospital will also be in accordance with its guidelines”, the hospital said.


In the aftermath of Sawyer’s death, both federal and state authorities in Lagos have instituted measures to curb the spread of the disease and quarantining all those who came in contact with Sawyer.

In total, Sawyer reportedly came in direct contact with 59 persons, 44 of whom were at the hospital he was taken to when he fell ill, according to the Lagos State government. The Lagos state government clarified in a statement Monday that Ms. Obi-Nnadozie, Nigeria’s Ambassador to Liberia was not among the 15 people at the airport who had had direct contact with Mr. Sawyer before his death as was initially believed.

However, it has been reported that Sawyer came in contact with three ECOWAS officials – a driver, a liaison officer and a protocol officer. Also in the list are two nursing staff and five airport handlers.

Dr. Jide Idris, the Lagos State Health Commissioner, told a news conference this week that 20 per cent of those that came in contact with the deceased had been physically screened. “The private hospital (First Consultants Medical Centre) was demobilized and primary source of infection eliminated. The patient has been cremated and the ash will be transferred to the Liberian government whenever the need arises. Decontamination process in all affected areas has commenced,” Dr. Idris said.

In the aftermath of Sawyer’s death, diplomatic, ECOWAS and medical authorities here are baffled over Sawyer’s deception, especially armed with new information that his sister, Princess had died of the deadly virus and his denial. Finance Ministry sources in Monrovia are in quiet murmur over what they feel was a letdown by Sawyer for not being forthcoming with his peers he worked with.

The ministry has since been temporarily shut down and those who came in contact with Sawyer are on a 21-day forced incubation monitoring process. “All senior officials coming in direct or indirect contact with Mr. Sawyer has been placed on the prescribed 21 days of observatory surveillance,” the ministry said in a statement this week.
FrontPageAfrica has now learnt that Sawyer exhibited similar indiscipline behavior during his sister’s stay at the Catholic Hospital in Monrovia where she was taken because he noticed she was bleeding profusely and was later found to be a victim of Ebola.
Sawyer was seen with blood on his clothing after his sister’s death and had earlier demanded that she be placed in a private room. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf cited indiscipline and disrespect as a key reason why Sawyer contracted the Ebola virus. She said his failure to heed medical advice put the lives of other residents across the nation’s border at risk.

http://www.informationng.com/2014/08...ull-story.html