It is uncertain just how many people came in contact with Patrick Sawyer the day he boarded an Asky flight in Liberia, stopped over in Ghana, changed planes in Togo and arrived Nigeria, where he died of Ebola haemorrhagic fever.
What is certain is that on July 20, Ebola, one of the most fatal diseases in human history, scaled the borders of four different countries—the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin—flew nearly three hours by air, crossing more than 2,000km and appeared at international arrivals at Murtala Muhammad Airport in Lagos.
Now officials from Nigeria and teams from the World Health Organisation and West African Health Organisation are scrambling to trace anyone who may have been in contact with Sawyer.
High on the target for contact tracing, as it is called, are fellow passengers, flight attendants, airport workers, luggage handlers.
“We are going to trace all of them, each one of them is going to be questioned,” said Lagos health commissioner Jide Idris.
“They are going to be monitored in the next 21 days to see if any of them has the symptoms,” Idris said.
So far, 59 people are on the radar—hospital staff, lab staff, airport contacts, including three ECOWAS staff drivers, a liaison and protocol officer, two nursing staff, five airport passenger handlers and Nigerian ambassador to Liberia.
But that’s all there is for now. The count could be as high as 200 passengers anywhere between Monrovia and Lagos, who could have contracted the virus and could continue to spread it, if not located and quarantined.
But the airline Asky is yet to provide a passenger list for the flights Sawyer used. It left instead on its website a page that said it was “working against the spread of the Ebola virus.”
It said it had temporarily suspended flight to Freetown and Monrovia; stopped to source food from affected locations, including Conakry, Guinea; provided protection articles for Asky staff to avoid direct contact; and used medical teams to screen all passengers in transit at the airport.
http://www.flyasky.com/asky/fr/Communique-de-Presse/ASKY-lutte-contre-la-propagation-du-virus-Ebola./Suspension-preventive-des-operations-de-ASKY-a-Freetown-et-Monrovia–171.aspx
Sawyer’s death has prompted questions that have been boggling the world ever since the first outbreak was reported in Guinea. What measures could help curtail the spread? How did a man whose sister had died days earlier from Ebola manage to get on a plane leaving the country? How prepared is the region to deal with the virus? What could happen to air travel? And will Nigeria be ready to face this onslaught?
International air travel has been the first casualty. Arik Air—possibly Nigeria’s biggest carrier—suspended flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone, two countries of known Ebola outbreak.
Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority suspended Asky flights into the country.
NCAA said Asky, headquartered in Togo, failed to show evidence of actions it had taken since the outbreak, and its Nigeria office did not demonstrate any capacity to be able to prevent a recurrence of possibly flying Ebola carriers to Nigeria, said NCAA acting director Benedict Adeyileka.
The expected capacity come for a 1944 Chicago Convention that requires effective measures to prevent spread of cholera, typhus, small pox, yellow fever, plague and such other communicable diseases through air travel.
Ebola is the ultimate new addition to that list.
On that account, the hospital where Sawyer died also shut down to allow it be decontaminated.
First Consultants Medical Centre, in Obalende, where Sawyer died early Friday, held onto the man from the moment he was brought in by ports health authority after fits of vomiting and diarrhoea on arrival at the airport.
“And he was immediately quarantined,” explained health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu on Friday, in attempts to draw a timeline to Sawyer’s arrival and death.
“The medical and nursing staff that had to handle him to keep him, we provided them with personal protective equipment…total barrier nursing,” he said.
“He has not been in touch with any other person since we took him from the airport. The only people he had communication with are those with whom he travelled on the plane.”
But the hospital beat off pressure to release Sawyer, whom they were told had an important role to play at an ECOWAS meeting in Calabar.
“We hope that by our action of preventing this gentleman from being extracted from our hospital and traveling to Calabar we have been able to prevent the spread of Ebola virus disease in Nigeria,” said the hospital’s medical director Dr B N Ohiaeri.
Sawyer was first diagnosed for malaria but hospital staff suspected something more—Ebola.
Initial symptoms of Ebola are similar to those in many other diseases, including malaria and typhoid.
Only the bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes, ears—which comes from the virus punching holes in blood vessels—stands out.
“Due to the fact that he was not responding to treatment but rather was developing haemorrhagic symptoms we further questioned him. He denied having been in contact with any persons with Ebola virus disease at home, in any hospital or at any burial,” said the hospital.
Liberians on web forums have since been in a tizzy, questioning why the country’s finance ministry would “allow this man to travel and put others at risk when they knew he was on a 21-day Ebola watch list because his sister had succumbed to this virus?” according to Omar Tariq.
Nigerians from Aba to Zaria have met Ebola with the same dread. Elias Ejeh in Ibadan commented on a website after reading one Ebola story that he was swearing off handshakes until further notice.
Noel Douglas in Port Harcourt was nonplussed to learn Ebola put a man in hospital, then hours later, that he was dead.
Tuesday, already emerged news that the first 20 among 59 for screening did not test positive. News portals have been quick to declare the country free.
But health authorities in Lagos are more cautious: those tested have different degrees—first or second degree—of contact, depending on how long and how directly or indirectly they came into contact with Sawyer.
The implication is that no Nigerian has been infected so far.
When President Goodluck Jonathan donated $3million to an ECOWAS solidarity fund for Ebola hit countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, no one thought the virus would be jumping borders into Nigeria two weeks later.
Back then, after a meeting of the Federal Executive Council, dominated by Ebola, health minister Chukwu said the virus “ has been moving eastwards towards Nigeria as well and we’re already facing danger from Central African Republic, even with what’s happening in Congo.”
He added: “People are also migrating to Chad. Chad and Cameroon are also in our borders. So, Nigeria is in danger.”
But can Nigeria afford to fold its arms? Or wring its hands?
