Doctor Dies of Ebola In Port Harcourt

Nigeria has confirmed its first Ebola death outside Lagos – a doctor in the oil hub of Port Harcourt.

Nigeria’s Health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the Port Harcourt doctor had died on 22 August, but the results of the tests have only just been made public.

A further 70 people are under surveillance in the city, while his wife has been put under quarantine.

The doctor had treated a patient, who later recovered, who had met Patrick Sawyer, the man who took Ebola from Liberia to Nigeria.

West Africa’s health ministers are meeting later to discuss how to tackle the world’s most deadly Ebola outbreak.

More than 1,550 people have died, with more than 3,000 confirmed cases –mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

More than 240 health workers have been infected with Ebola – a rate which the World Health Organization (WHO) said was “unprecedented”.

It noted that in many cases protective suits, even rubber gloves and face masks, were not available.

The doctor becomes the sixth fatality in Nigeria, which is Africa’s most populous country.

On Wednesday, Nigeria announced that schools would not reopen after holidays until 13 October in order to try and contain the disease.