EBOLA VIRUS ON THE MOVE: Suspected Ebola case reported in Kwara State
The Chairman of the state committee on Ebola virus, Prof Sunday Opabola told reporters in Ilorin, the state capital allaying fear of outbreak of the disease in the state.
He said the suspected case was on Wednesday discovered on a 7-month old baby newly brought in to the state from Ibadan, the Oyo state capital
The professor of medicine, who doubles as a Special Assistant to Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed on public health emphasised that there is no confirmed case of the disease in the state as being speculated around.
He added that the baby with the suspected case was found with some symptoms which are not exclusive to ebola disease but also have to do with those of lassa fever, cholera, malaria and some other diseases.
Said he: “We need to do this because of all the rumours and talks going on in town and also on the social media.
Kwara state has always had a very strong surveillance system for infectious diseases but when that thing came up, the ministry of health set up a committee to put in place a standard procedure for outbreak control and prevention in the state.
“But due to the seriousness of the situation, the governor of the state set up a committee for the control of the disease which was inaugurated yesterday. In fact we have not had an inaugural meeting which is supposed to be 10 this morning but this is more important.
“The committee was given specific terms of reference.
But by 9 am yesterday, I was called to the ministry of health that a proprietor of a private hospital who is a pediatrician reported a suspected case on admission in his hospital.
The suspected patient is a seven-month old child that came to Ilorin with the mother and she came out with suspicion of malaria and was admitted at Surulere clinic and they started treating him for malaria, that is on the 10th of this month, four days ago. After managing him for two days, there was no improvement, he was referred to a pediatrician.
“After clinical assessment, he apparently saw some symptoms that look like Ebola. These symptoms basically fever, diarrhea, vomiting that were being taken care of before in other hospitals but he now saw that this vomiting consists of blood and that was where he made a report.
“Now if it were not in this situation we are, I am sure he couldn’t have made any report because some other diseases could have presented these same symptoms, even malaria in children would present something like. Other viral infections, viral hemorrhagic diseases would present like this, Lassa fever and so on, even cholera can present like this but because in this situation we have been at alert and we don’t want to take chances.
So he made a report and we went into action and the standard procedure were one, we removed the patients from the hospital to our already prepared isolation centre at Sobi Specialist Hospital, then we continued managing the patient there, we took blood sample of the patients and the mother for diagnosis of the virus. Currently the samples are on their way to Lagos.
“One of the samples would be given to Professor Tomori who is the major viral person in Nigeria at Redeemers University and we are testing the second sample at LUTH today.
“As we await the test result, other measures are being put in place such as one; the governor has approved the purchase of the test machine which has been ordered from Abuja and we expect it to arrive Ilorin today and this machine would be stationed at the Kwara Diagnostic Centre and we post staff there who are experienced at operating this machine would help us in doing that.
“We have done this to allow easy and quick accessibility to testing and screening of suspected cases. Two, continuous surveillance is going on and we are doing contact tracing for each particular patient. We will continue the contact tracing as we await the test result.
” We will continue the contact tracing as we await the test result.”
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