Ebola crisis: Nigeria free of deadly virus, say health chiefs

Nigeria received rare praise from health officials as the World Health Organisation declared there had been no confirmed outbreak in the country for 42 days. 

Nigerian Minister of Water Resources Sarah Ochekpe (L) washes hands with pupils of Powa International Childrens School as part of the 2014 Hand Washing Day Ebola campaign in Abuja Photo: EPA

Health chiefs declared Nigeria to be officially free of the deadly Ebola virus yesterday, giving rare praise to the country's government for containing an outbreak that could have proved disastrous.

In an unexpected glimmer of hope in the battle against Ebola, Nigerian officials successfully tracked down and quarantined nearly 1,000 possible carriers of the virus after an initial case back in June.

The operation confounded fears that the giant West African nation was likely to become a major breeding ground for Ebola, given its huge cities, poor health service, and reputation for chaotic government.

Yesterday, the World Health Organization announced that Nigeria had not had a confirmed case of Ebola for 42 days - equivalent to two successive incubation periods of 21 days - effectively giving it a clean bill of health.

The announcent is a relief to WHO officials, who had feared the outbreak would be uncontrollable were it to spread to Nigeria's lawless north-east, where the Boko Haram insurgent group holds sway.

"This is a spectacular success story," said Rui Gama Vaz, a WHO spokesman, at a news conference in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, where officials broke into applause when he said Nigeria had shaken off the disease. "It shows that Ebola can be contained."

Unflattering comparisons are now likely to be drawn between Nigeria's success and the mishandling of the recent Ebola outbreak in America, where President Barack Obama berated health officials on Sunday for a series of mishaps. In Texas, some 120 people are still being monitored for possible infection, although yesterday officials said that 43 of 48 people on an original watch list had now passed a 21-day incubation period.

The Nigerian outbreak began when Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian diplomat working for his country's finance ministry, arrived at Lagos's main airport on July 20. He had flown despite knowing that he had been exposed to the virus, and vomited while on the plane, infecting a number of other passengers. He then collapsed in the airport terminal building.

At the time, Nigeria's doctors were on strike, potentially making the country even more vulnerable to an Ebola outbreak. But that proved to be a blessing in disguise. Rather than being taken to one of Lagos's large public hospitals, where he could have waited for hours for treatment and infected hundreds of patients and medics alike, Mr Sawyer ended up at a private clinic, where doctors soon suspected he was lying about his claim to be suffering from malaria.

They alerted the ministry of health and forbade him to leave the hospital, physically restraining him at one point when he demanded to do so. The confrontations are believed to have resulted in several of the clinic's medical staff being infected, including Dr Stella Adadevoh, the doctor who first recognised his symptoms as Ebola.
"We agreed that the thing to do was not to let him out of the hospital," said Benjamin Ohiaeri, a medic at the First Consultants Hospital. "If we had let him out, within 24 hours of being here, he would have contacted and infected a lot more people."

Nigeria's government - accused of incompetence over its response to Boko Haram's abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls - also showed initiative. In all, nearly 900 people had to be monitored and traced throughout the country, a task for which the government trained some 1,800 volunteers, who then knocked on the doors of nearly 26,000 homes. In Lagos, Babatunde Fashola, a well-regarded state governor now tipped as a future president, also rushed back from a pilgrimage to Mecca to oversee the crisis.

Elsewhere in west Africa, the Ebola crisis remains acute. Last night, European Union foreign ministers agreed to step up efforts to contain the virus, including a guarantee that any European medical workers who volunteer to help in west Africa have the option of medical evacuation should they become infected. The World Food Program also warned that Ebola-hit countries were facing food shortages, as farmers abandon crops and livestock near infected neighbourhoods.