Ebola Virus: Woman Dies in Ekiti State After 4 Hospitals Rejected Her Thinking She Has Ebola

The Government of Ekiti State in an official statement has debunked rumors of an outbreak of the deadly Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, in Ekiti state.

This came as the government lamented the unfortunate death of a woman, who was said to have vomited and collapsed in premises of the State Ministry of Health and was rejected in four different private hospitals because of the text messages circulated by some unidentified people suspected to be in the Healthcare sector that tagged her Ebola patient.

During a press briefing, Ekiti State Commissioner for Health, Professor Olusola Fasubaa said:

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 neighbors) 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.”

The Commissioner also mentioned a similar case at the NYSC Orientation camp in Ise Ekiti where a young man who had been inadequately treated for malaria collapsed and was abandoned by everybody including the camp’s healthcare givers from 6am to 3pm when the state government intervened.

Prof Fasubaa appealed to doctors in the state to live up to their responsibilities and remember the Hippocratic oath they swore to. He stressed that not all patients that have fever or vomiting have Ebola.