Suspicious death in SE Nigeria not Ebola: WHO
A man who died in the southeast Nigerian city of Calabar did not have Ebola, the World Health Organization said on Friday, after 10 people were quarantined as a precaution.
Cory Couillard, from the WHO African Region, told AFP in an email that the “laboratory investigation for EVD (Ebola Virus Disease) and Lassa fever turned out negative”.
The patient at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital died on Wednesday, the WHO confirmed earlier.
He was reported locally as being a suspected Ebola case, although his symptoms were not specified and his travel history was unknown, it added.
Nigeria registered its first case of Ebola in July 2014, when a Liberian man died in the southwestern financial hub of Lagos, sparking fears of its spread outside West Africa.
Nineteen people were infected in total, of whom seven died. Nigeria was praised for its response in containing the outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever.
On Wednesday, the WHO said there had been no new confirmed cases of Ebola in the week to October 4, the first full week without fresh cases of the disease since March 2014.
A total 11,312 of the 28,457 people infected with the virus since December 2013 have died, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
(AFP)