Doctor who died of Ebola exposed dozens in Nigeria to illness, says WHO

A doctor infected with Ebola exposed dozens of people in southern Nigeria to the virus by treating patients before his death, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.  

Nigerian officials had believed that the killer disease was largely contained after a traveler from Liberia brought the disease into the country.

But one man who had contact with the ill visitor evaded surveillance and triggered a second cluster of cases in Port Harcourt, in southeastern Nigeria.

WHO said that a doctor there is now dead and his wife has Ebola symptoms. Some 60 other people are under surveillance after having "high-risk" or "very high-risk" contact with the infected doctor.

More than 1,900 people have died in West Africa in the world's worst outbreak of Ebola, the head of the WHO said, marking a major increase in fatalities, which the WHO estimated at just over 1,500 last week.

Nigeria's Ebola toll so far has been limited in comparison to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, where hundreds have died in each country from the disease.

Despite indications on Wednesday that the Ebola epidemic is still spreading, an experimental drug may offer hope of treating the disease.

A British man who contracted Ebola in West Africa has been discharged after successful treatment with the experimental ZMapp drug, the Royal Free Hospital in London said on Wednesday. William Pooley, 29, was treated in a special isolation unit after contracting the deadly disease in August while working as a volunteer nurse in Sierra Leone.

Pooley later told reporters at a news conference that he thought he had been fortunate.

"I was very lucky in several ways," he said. "Firstly in the standard of care that I received, which is a world apart from what people are receiving in West Africa at the moment despite a lot of organizations' best efforts.

ZMapp is one of several treatments for Ebola under development. The drug, although never tested in humans, gained attention this summer when two American aid workers who contracted Ebola in Liberia were cured after receiving it.

ZMapp, which uses antibodies grown in tobacco plants, is made by the California-based firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has said a federal contract worth up to $42.3 million would help accelerate testing of the treatment.

It said Mapp would manufacture a small amount of ZMapp for early-stage safety studies and animal studies needed to prove its effectiveness and safety in people. Mapp Biopharmaceutical has said that its supplies of ZMapp were exhausted after treating the Americans and sending several doses to West Africa.

Human safety trials are due to begin this week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and later this year on one from NewLink Genetics Corp.

Wire services