MissMeiya:

Na only you waka come? Ok. Continue.

I hail you, Madam Peace.

prettyboi1989:
Walk away in shame attention seeker.

prettyboi1989:
Walk away in shame attention seeker. Notorious entity, u av d same trend on evri posts u mention, get 2 see d brighter side of life n stop berating people u dnt evn knw, it wunt get u anywhr, nl is som1's means of income wats urs?

Mynd44:
An bio data includes travel history?

and rushed to the hospital from the airport....the first thing a first responder does is to stabilize the patient. Not ask where he was travelling from.

ceejayluv:
Would have, could have... Etc... The mistakes have been made.. I still don't want to call that a failure on the part of the hospital. Considering that he was quarantined despite the pressure from "ogas at the top" to release him. The matter was promptly reported to the ministry of health.
If a soccer striker misses a clear shot but scores on the rebound and gets injured- is that failure?

Poznan:

lol! Has Nigeria scored on the rebound? The illustration doesn't fit. It is not even about scoring. It is about dying. The fact remains that the OP is right. This could have been averted

MissMeiya:

"1. Please post on topic always. Don't derail or tribalize threads."

I suppose you just proved why you're an idíot.

Mynd44: The OP actually expected the primary response team at a hospital to start asking for the travel history of a patient?

I find the lack on a reliable chain of reason hilarious

Mynd44:
A man walks into an hospital and you expect them to ask him for his travel history?

what planet do you live?

gmyguy:
Any medical doctor in the endemic region ought to treat every fever, especially if you got a history of collapse in airport, like Ebola.

When we were in med school, during the Avian/ Swine flu epidemic. it was one of our questions during our finals exams, regarding a traveler with symptoms of FLU who recently visited Mexico, the answer was straight up Swine flu. The problem i think is most Doctors do not concern themselves with foreign affairs. Unfortunately, Ebola is not forgiving for such mistakes. As a doctor, you need to be very versatile and highly suspicious and have a high index of suspicion for such public health red flag diseases: HIV, Hepatitis, TB, now Ebola, etc. When you see such patients, you shouldn't miss diagnosis. You may not get a second chance.

MissMeiya:

Not being a saint doesn't make you a devil. He was human. But I'm not here to defend him. I'm pissed that the government is hiding behind him to avoid admitting their shameful inadequacy.

mamarika: for your objective reasoning,may God bless you, real good !!!the op wasn't criticising anyone but saying,we can do better.both govt Απϑ the nation as a whole.we emergency proactiveness Απϑ preparedness.our medics needs τ̅☺ apply more professionalism Απϑ versatility in their practice!thank you .

Beync: no doubt the authorities failed but then all patrick actions say much about the kind of human he was. Making contact with everyone, urinating at the nurses, removing the string thereby letting his blood splash on everything is enough to tell that he really meant to get the virus across. What kind of a human wants innocent people to die along with him? He was evil

naptu2:

+100

Sincere9gerian: Can the moderators help move this thread to the health section?

Poznan:

sawyer was taken to the hospital from the airport. They knew Sawyer came from Liberia. Hence they enquired about his historywith ebola patients. He denied making any contact with them back home and we took hisword, treated him for malaria, etc. And u say OP is wrong?

gmyguy: people do all sorts of irrational things when they are sick. especially a rapidly killing disease that takes away life, preventing him from saying good bye to his loved ones, children, one of whom is 1 year old. Can you even begin to imagine how helpless he was. Anybody in his shoes could have been just as hysterical

prettyboi1989:
So its you whoz got intelligent tinz 2 say? By berating d way I type, by d way ow does it affect ur life? Watz ur bizness wif ma post? I knw wat I wrote n I c no essence in the guy's criticisms when he himself isn't in a better place 2 c wats going on.

By d way will sayn wat I wrote give u credits? Or wat do u gain spendin ur night n day to discredit meaningful comments? Guess u one of dose nl girls whuz got nufnelse to do oda dan play God when in fact ya'll av nothing.

adconline:
Stop wasting your MB. You are not making any sense!

Sincere9gerian: Nigeria was free of Ebola until the late Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American, imported Ebola into Nigeria on July 20. Mr Sawyer was reported to have been terribly ill on his flight and was rushed to the First Consultant Hospital Obalende, Lagos, where he was diagnosed as having Ebola. He died on July 24.

From that single imported case of Ebola, Nigeria has had, till date, 14 confirmed cases of Ebola (including the 2 cases confirmed today out of the secondary contacts), out of which 5 deaths [including the index (imported) case] was recorded. 5 confirmed cases of Ebola made full recovery and have been discharged while up to 213 contacts are on follow up.

Few days ago, Nigeria’s Health Minister, Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu described the way Nigeria has managed the imported case of Ebola so far as a "success story". With all due respect, I beg to disagree with the Prof. I think we FAILED and I will point out the different levels of failure below.

1. The index case of Ebola was already sick when he arrived the Lagos Airport on July 20. If the Port Health Authorities were alive to their duties on that fateful day, perhaps the late Sawyer would have been quarantined immediately, especially since there was already a widely reported ongoing epidemic of Ebola in Liberia since March this year. Therefore, the Port Health Authority FAILED at this level.

2. Late Patrick Sawyer was rushed to First Consultant Hospital, Lagos, on arrival. It was reported that Sawyer was initially assessed and treated for malaria, hepatitis, etc. The assessment and diagnosis of Ebola came later. The junior and senior doctors that managed Sawyer at the First Consultant Hospital FAILED at this level. With history of acute fever (plus other symptoms) and recent arrival from Liberia, the diagnosis at presentation ought to have been ebola viral disease (EVD) UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE.

However, the hospital should be commended for making the diagnosis of EVD eventually and alerting the Lagos health authorities. Otherwise, things could have been worse.

3. The failure of the the First Consultant Hospital to make the diagnosis of ebola promptly can also be linked to failure of the state and federal health authorities to sensitize the private and public hospitals on the possibility of ebola outbreak in Nigeria considering the fact that neighbouring west African countries have been battling with ebola epidemic since March this year. The state and federal health authorities FAILED in this respect.

4. The other level of failure is the way we have managed the primary contacts of the index case. I believe that the primary contacts ought to have been categorized into high risk and low risk contacts. The low risk contacts will include, for instance, all those that flew in the same aircraft with Mr Sawyer. The high risk contacts should include the person who sat next to Mr Sawyer in the aircraft, those who helped him all the way to the Lagos hospital and all the health workers that took care of him when his condition was still unknown. All those who fall into the high risk group ought to have been quarantined compulsorily immediately because they are at high risk of EVB. On the other hand, those who fall into the low risk group can be followed up at their homes since they are at low risk of developing EVD.

This strategy has the following benefits:
- since we cannot quarantine all the primary contacts because of logistic challenges, those at high risk, who are few, can be quarantined.
- high risk individuals who develop EVD while on quarantine will not transfer the disease to secondary contacts. That way, secondary contacts will be minimal or zero. If this strategy was adopted, the 213 secondary contacts that are currently on follow up and the 2 confirmed cases of EVD among secondary contacts would not have arisen.



The above suggested strategy is better than the strategy adopted by Nigeria's health authorities, which is simply to follow up all contacts from home. This has led to what looks like a cascade of 213 secondary contacts and 2 confirmed cases of EBV among the secondary contacts. And God forbid, if we continue this way, we will soon be talking of tertiary contacts, quaternary contacts, and so on, with resultant ballooning morbidity and mortality.

In conclusion, if we have this level of mortality and morbidity from a single imported case of Ebola, just imagine what will happen if, God forbid, we have infiltration of several Ebola cases into Nigeria.

Note: this article is a critique of the system, and does not necessarily suggest the author would have done better than the various actors under the same circumstance.

Beync: there's no excuse for his actions, the honourable thing to have done was to hav submitted himself to the liberian authority and die honourably. then he would have had the opportunity to bid goodbye to his 1yr old. Looks at how many lives we lost due to his craziness , how many died out of drinking salt? How many developed ulcer, hbp, etc fear and panic every where? Insane sawyer

prettyboi1989:
poor man u still in d age of mb? get a life, i dnt use mb dummy.
if u cant make any sense out of wat i wrote den u are too dumb to understand abbreviations and intelligent posts, wonder whr u 4rm, commoner.
by d way ow does my post affect ur family or ur life? ow does my post affect u n ow has it become a concern of urs? u nid 2 get a life n stop lookn 4 cheap attention in a page viewd by thousands

adconline:
What a display of sophisticated idiocy brought to you by failed Naija education system.

phantom: Late Patrick Sawyer was rushed to First Consultant Hospital, Lagos, on arrival. It was reported that Sawyer was initially assessed and treated for malaria, hepatitis, etc. The assessment and diagnosis of Ebola came later. The junior and senior doctors that managed Sawyer at the First Consultant Hospital FAILED at this level. With history of acute fever (plus other symptoms) and recent arrival from Liberia, the diagnosis at presentation ought to have been ebola viral disease (EVD) UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE.


with all due respect the above is rubbish

MissMeiya:

I understood you. 5 years later. You should know that people often skip over things written like this. It's not "informal", it's INCORRECT.

No one is going to strain themselves to read gibberish, when it's unlikely that someone who writes like this would ever have something intelligent to say.

laudate:

Thank you! "Rule 21. Please spell words correctly when you post, and try to use perfect grammar and punctuation.

This is clearly listed as part of the posting rules, but the average Nigerian believes that laws or rules are meant to be broken. I have said this before in another thread: "Moderators should delete any post that contains more than 3 abbreviations."

It is not so hard to write clear, lucid sentences in simple English.