Third person dies of Ebola in Nigeria

A staff member of the West African regional body Ecowas (the Economic Community of West African States) has become the third person in Nigeria to die of Ebola, the organization said Wednesday.

Jatto Asihu Abdulqudir, 36, a protocol assistant, had traveled to an Ecowas event in Nigeria with Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian man believed to have brought Ebola to Nigeria last month. Abdulqudir later fell ill and had been placed under quarantine.

The country has reported eight cases of Ebola since Sawyer arrived on July 20.

"The Commission wishes to reassure staff of all Community institutions all over the entire region that it is taking all necessary steps to guarantee their health and safety," Ecowas said in a statement.

Separately, a nurse who had had close contact with Sawyer skipped quarantine in Lagos, a Nigerian megacity of 21 million, and headed to her home in the southeastern city of Enugu, where she has had contact with 20 other people, the government said on Wednesday.

Information Minister Labaran Maku said the nurse, herself a suspected case, and her 20 contacts were all under surveillance in Enugu, bringing the total number being watched in the country to 189.

Her action highlights the risk of an outbreak in Lagos, where the majority of people are migrants from other parts of the country and other West African countries.

"One of the nurses that was involved with the treatment of the index case, unfortunately, disobeyed medical instructions and somehow traveled to Enugu," Maku told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan.

"We are calling on citizens to cooperate. If health workers say you have had contact with A, B, C, don't move to anywhere, respect that judgment."

The disease has killed more than 1,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in the world's worst outbreak yet of Ebola, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has called it an international emergency.

Also on Wednesday, Liberia announced that it was about to receive doses of experimental Ebola drug ZMapp to be given to two sick doctors, making them the first Africans to receive some of the scarce treatment. 

The U.S. government confirmed that it had put Liberian officials in touch with the maker of ZMapp, and referred questions to the manufacturer. In a statement, California's Mapp Biopharmaceutical said that in responding to a request from an unidentified West African country it had run out of its supply of the treatment.

And, Canada announced that it would be sending an experimental vaccine to West Africa to help the World Health Organization fight the Ebola epidemic.

The news came amid concerns over the fact that the only people to receive ZMapp so far had been Westerners: two Americans and a Spaniard, all of whom were evacuated to their home countries from Liberia.

Canada’s Health Minister Rona Ambrose said from 800 to 1,000 doses of the VSV-EBOV vaccine would be distributed through the WHO in West Africa. 

Ambrose said the Canadian government was "committed to doing everything we can to support our international partners, including providing staff to assist with the outbreak response, funding and access to our experimental vaccine."

The VSV-EBOV vaccine was developed at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
 It has never been tested on humans but has shown promise in animal research, according to the government, which licensed BioProtection Systems to further develop the product for use in humans.

There is currently no available proven cure or vaccine for Ebola. To combat its spread, the WHO has authorized the use of experimental drugs.

On Monday the WHO said 1,013 people had died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Authorities had recorded 1,848 suspected, probable or confirmed cases of the disease, the U.N. health agency said. The updated WHO tally includes figures from August 7-9, when 52 more people died and 69 more were infected.

Wire services