One of the Nige­rian nurses that attended to the late Librarian, Patrick Sawyer, is dead, Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, said yesterday. It was gathered that there were also five other con­firmed cases that had direct contact with Sawyer.
Nigeria has now record­ed seven confirmed cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). The first was the index case, the imported case from Liberia.
According to the minis­ter, the nurse died on Au­gust 5, as the first known Nigerian to die of the EVD and this was one of the nurses that attended to the Liberian. The other five cases were currently be­ing treated at the Isolation ward in Lagos.
Chukwu said: “It is per­tinent to note that all the Nigerians diagnosed of the EVD were primary contacts of the index case. The 24/7 Emergency Op­erations Centre, which I intimated you of in my last press conference, will be fully functional by tomor­row.
“It will be headed by Dr. Faisal Shuaibu as the inci­dent manager. He will later today (Wednesday) lead a six-man inter-agency team drawn from National Pri­mary Health Care Develop­ment Agency (NPHCDA), the US CDC, the WHO, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Lagos to complete the setting up of the centre.”
The minister added that the team would be joined by other personnel from the Lagos State Government and the federal hospitals in Lagos area as well as the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control. He said he had also appointed Prof. O. Onajole of the Lagos Uni­versity Teaching Hospital as the Director of Commu­nication and Community Mobilisation.
“We are embarking on recruiting additional health personnel to strengthen the team who are currently managing the situation in Lagos.
“We are making arrange­ments to procure isolation tents to quicken the pace of providing isolation wards in all the states of the fed­eration and the Federal Capital Territory,” he said.
He said the government was setting up a special team to provide counsel­ling and psychosocial sup­port to patients, identified contacts and their families.
Within the week, he said, Minister of Informa­tion, Labaran Maku, and himself would visit Lagos State to assess the situa­tion.

Nigeria records first Ebola death