Ebola: Corps Member Miraculously Escapes Death

The Ektit State Government on Thursday revealed that a serving corps member miraculously escaped death over Ebola scare at the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Orientation camp in Ise Ekiti.

The state commissioner for Health, Professor Olusola Fasubaa, who made this known to Vanguard reporter said the young man (names withheld) who had been inadequately treated for malaria collapsed and was abandoned by everybody including the camp’s healthcare personnel from 6.am to 3.pm.

He said it was the state government that now intervened and rushed the victim to the hospital, where he was given medical attention.

Fasubaa revealed that the corps member blood sample was taken and sent to the National laboratory in Lagos for examination. He said the test result which later came in from the National laboratory declared the victim Ebola-free.

The commissioner said the young man was lucky to be alive as he could have died from non-attention by the healthcare personnel at the orientation camp.

Fasubaa further explained that for anybody to have EVD he /she would have travelled to infectious area or had contact with an infected person, and after 2-21 days of such contact, the person would develop the symptoms of fever, intense weakness, bone and muscular pains, which would later progress to vomiting, diarrhea and organ damage.

He urged the state doctors to live up to their responsibilities and remember the Hippocratic oath they took, and stressed that not all patients that have fever or vomiting is Ebola carrier.

The deadly virus was first recorded in 1976 after an outbreak in Zaire now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and was brought to Nigeria by the late Ameriac-Liberian, Patrick Sawyer.  It would be recalled that a Nigerian woman last week died at the United Arab Emirate (UAE) on suspicion of Ebola virus after showing symptoms related to the disease.