Ebola spreads from Nigeria’s Lagos to oil hub of Port Harcourt

A doctor in Nigeria’s southeastern oil hub city of Port Harcourt has died of Ebola, Nigeria’s Health Ministry says. The medic died on Aug. 22, a day after treating a patient who had contact with Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American who brought the disease to Nigeria and died in a Lagos hospital on July 25. The doctor’s wife remains in quarantine while a further 70 people are being monitored in the city. Port Harcourt is a popular base for a number of international oil companies that work in Nigeria.

Following the report of this death by the doctor’s widow the next day, the case has been thoroughly investigated and laboratory analysis showed that this doctor died from Ebola.

Onyebuchi Chukwu, Nigerian health minister

Ebola-hit nations met for crisis talks on Thursday as the death toll topped 1,500 and the World Health Organisation warned that the number of cases could exceed 20,000 before the outbreak is stemmed. As of Aug. 26, 1,552 people had died from the virus in four countries—Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria—while 3,062 had been infected, the WHO said in Geneva.

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