Ebola in Nigeria: Number of Ebola cases in Nigeria hits 19

September 2014 – AFRICA – The Nigerian government Monday said the country has recorded another Ebola case in southwest Lagos state, bringing the total number of Ebola cases to 19 with seven fatalities. Onyebuchi Chukwu, the country’s minister of health, told reporters in capital Abuja that 10 others have recovered after treatment, with the rest being treated, Xinhua reported. The new case is the fiancé of one of the primary contacts of the index case, Patrick Sawyer. The late Sawyer is the Liberian-American who brought the virus to Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation late July. The primary contact had made a full recovery, the minister added, noting that the sister of the southern city of Port Harcourt doctor, who treated one of Sawyer’s primary contact in a hotel secretly, has fully recovered and been discharged. The current Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) that started in Guinea has killed more than 2,000 people so far in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.

The Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a severe condition caused by a virus from the Filoviridae family. Known to be a condition that is transmitted from animals to humans, this virus spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or animal. The incubation period (or the time between when the actual infection takes place to the time when a person sees symptoms of this condition) for this disease is about one week. After this period a person will commonly see the signs that are considered as ‘early symptoms’.  According to Dr.  Ratan, the early symptoms include fever, rashes, headache nausea, vomiting and stomach pain. Apart from that a person may also experience symptoms like pain in the lower back, arthritis like pain all over the body, diarrhea and a sore throat. –The Health Site