The Minister of Health in Nigeria, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, says the first Nigerian Ebola patient declared fit and discharged from hospital.
The Minister’s statement is coming two days after the death of a fourth Ebola patient was reported.
A late Liberian-American man, Patrick Sawyer, was the first case of Ebola virus in Nigeria and he died on July 25.
In an effort to contain the spread of the virus, the Lagos State government, the only state in Nigeria with reported cases of Ebola, had provided an isolation unit to accommodate persons that tested positive to the virus.
At a press conference in Abuja on Thursday Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, said e ight persons are still alive, more than half of them are doing very well and actually showing signs of recovery … under treatment,” Prof Chukwu said.
The discharged patient is believed the be among those he earlier said were recovering. Nigeria now has 169 persons who had secondary contact with those being quarantined for developing symptoms of the Ebola virus.
The World Health Organization has called this Ebola outbreak, whose worst affected countries include Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, an international emergency. It has killed around 55 to 60 percent of those who have contracted the disease.
President Goodluck Jonathan last week declared the Ebola outbreak in Lagos State a national Emergency and established an intervention fund of 1.9 billion Naira to contain the disease.
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