The death toll from the Ebola outbreak tearing through West Africa
has passed the 1 500 mark while the number of cases has soared past 3
000, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.
As of 26
August 26, 1 552 people had died from the murderous epidemic that reared
its head at the beginning of the year, while 3 062 had become infected,
the UN's health body said.
On 20 August, the toll stood at 1 427 deaths out of 2 600 cases.
Nigeria
on Thursday said that a doctor had died from Ebola in the southeastern
oil city of Port Harcourt in the first case of the deadly virus outside
of its biggest city, Lagos.
Health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said
the medic died on 22 August after treating a patient who had contact
with the Liberian-American man who brought the virus to Nigeria, and who
died in a Lagos hospital on 25 July.
Doctor’s widow
"Following
the report of this death by the doctor's widow the next day, the case
had been thoroughly investigated and laboratory analysis showed that
this doctor died from EVD [Ebola Virus Disease]," he told reporters in
the capital Abuja.
The latest case brings to six the number of
people who have died from the haemorrhagic fever in Nigeria. Fifteen
people have now been confirmed to have the disease.
On Wednesday,
Chukwu had said that the virus was contained because there were no cases
outside Lagos, but warned against complacency in fighting the disease.
News
that a doctor died 435km away will raise fears about the spread of the
virus, just as Nigerians began to think that they had stopped Ebola in
its tracks.
Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers state, is the
centre of Nigeria's oil industry and home to a number of oil giants,
including Anglo-Dutch giant Shell and US firm Chevron.
Laboratory tests
Chukwu
said a patient who had contact with the Liberian-American victim
managed to slip through the net and go to Port Harcourt in the last week
of July, where he saw the doctor after showing Ebola-like symptoms.
"After
four days, following a manhunt for him, he returned to Lagos by which
time he was found to be without symptoms," Chukwu told reporters.
"This
case would have been of no further interest since he had completed the
21 days of surveillance without any other issue but for the fact that
the doctor who treated him died last Friday."
Following the
doctor's death, the minister said that several contacts had now been
"traced, registered and placed under surveillance". He did not specify
how many.
His widow has shown symptoms of the virus and has been placed in isolation pending results of laboratory tests, he added.
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