Professor Olusola Fasubaa, Ekiti State Commissioner for Health on Thursday, announced that a woman (names withheld) died over rumored Ebola outbreak in the state, after being rejected by four private hospitals.
According to Vanguard, the commissioner, who made this known at a press briefing said the victim, who was a staff of the Comprehensive Health Centre, Ogotun, was said to have vomited and collapsed in the premises of the State Ministry of Health, and was quickly rushed to an hospital where she was rejected because of the text messages circulated by some unidentified health workers whom tagged her Ebola patient.
“On 20th August, 2014, a 55-year-old health care worker at Ogotun- Ekiti, who was said not to have had any complaints of illness in the last two months and no current history of travel outside the state (according to her neighbours) got to the Data Bank of the Ministry of Health at about 1.pm and collapsed after coughing out blood and subsequently vomited and she was immediately tagged Ebola victim without an adequate history taken and people started running away. The woman subsequently died in the late evening. The unnecessary write-up through the social media by some doctors in the state is uncalled for and counter-productive to the efforts of the state government in containing and curtailing the spread of the virus” Fasubaa narrated.
Fasubaa, who lamented the incident assured that there was no known case of the disease in the state and warned that sending callous messages through the Short Message Service (SMS) could lead to avoidable death of innocent and non-Ebola patients.
He cautioned against creating unjustifiable panic through indiscriminate spreading of unsubstantiated rumours about spurious cases of Ebola.
It would be recalled that on August 18, 2014, the Kwara State Committee on Control and Prevention of Ebola Virus Disease also announced that a seven-month old baby suspected to be suffering from the Ebola disease in the state died of illness said to be related to malaria.
