Barely 24 hours before his death, Patrick Sawyer had a rather strange - and in the words of medical and diplomatic sources here, “Indiscipline” encounter with nurses and health workers at First Consultants Hospital in Obalende, one of the most crowded parts of Lagos, a population of some 21 million inhabitants, FrontPageAfrica has learned.
Looking to get to the bottom of Sawyer’s strange ailment on the Asky Airline flight, which Sawyer transferred on in Togo, hospital officials say, he was tested for both malaria and HIV AIDS.
However, when both tests came back negative, he was then asked whether he had made contact with any person with the Ebola Virus, to which Sawyer denied. Sawyer’s sister, Princess had died of the deadly virus on Monday, July 7, 2014 at the Catholic Hospital in Monrovia.
On Friday, July 25, 2014, 18 days later, Sawyer died in Lagos.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that the average incubation period for suspected cases or someone who has made contact with an Ebola patient is eight to ten days from exposure to onset of symptoms. The range is from two to 21 days.
“That's why we recommend that contacts of an infected person go on a fever watch for 21 days,” says Stephan Monroe, deputy director of CDC's National Center for Emerging Zoonotic and Infectious Diseases, at a briefing Monday.
‘Against Medical Advice’
Since the first report surfaced in March, there have been more than 1,201 cases reported and unfortunately 672 deaths in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the CDC says.
“This is the largest Ebola outbreak in history and the first in West Africa. It’s a rapidly changing situation and we expect there will be more cases in these countries in the coming weeks and months. The response to this outbreak will be more of a marathon than a sprint.”
Back in Lagos, authorities at the First Consultants Hospital in Obalende decided that despite Sawyer’s denial, they would test him for Ebola, due to the fact that he had just arrived from Liberia, where there has been an outbreak of the disease with more than 100 deaths.
The hospital issued a statement this week stating that Sawyer was quarantined immediately after he was discovered to have been infected with the deadly virus.
In addition, a barrier nursing was implemented around Sawyer and the Lagos State Ministry of Health was immediately notified. Hospital authorities also requested the Federal Ministry of Health for additional laboratory test based on its suspicion of Ebola.
FrontPageAfrica has now learned that upon being told he had Ebola, Mr. Sawyer went into a rage, denying and objecting to the opinion of the medical experts.
“He was so adamant and difficult that he took the tubes from his body and took off his pants and urinated on the health workers, forcing them to flee."
The hospital would later report that it resisted immense pressure to let out Sawyer from its hospital against the insistence from some higher-ups and conference organizers that he had a key role to play at the ECOWAS convention in Calabar, the Cross River State capital.
In fact, FrontPageAfrica has been informed that officials in Monrovia were in negotiations with ECOWAS to have Sawyer flown back to Liberia. Read the full news from
Heart Touching!!
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