News

Nigerian Soldier Tests Positive For Ebola

Published

10 years ago

December 5, 2014

A Nigerian soldier, who is serving on the United Nations’ peace mission,has tested positive for the deadly Ebola infection in Liberia and is to be flown to the Netherlands for treatment.
The University Medical Center Utrecht will quarantine the soldier at a “calamity unit,” The Nation reports.
According to a Dutch Health Ministry spokeswoman, Inge Freriksen, the peace-worker will be flown to the capital, Amsterdam, and then carried to the city of Utrecht.
The UN mission declared Nigerian soldier had tested positive for the dreaded disease a day earlier.
The infected soldier had been a member of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), which has been stationed in Liberia since 2003 to restore peace and stability to the violence-ravaged country after two deadly civil wars.
This is the third case of deadly virus among mission staff, according to Karin Landgren, a top UN envoy in the country. The previous two died.
The mission has so far known 16 people who came into contact with the trooper, and they have been isolated, she said.
Areas the Nigerian visited while symptomatic have been decontaminated.
He will be the first Ebola patient treated in the Netherlands.
Only recently, doctors have announced that the first test of an Ebola vaccine in human shows it’s safe and appears to be working as designed.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Nigeria officially free of Ebola after six weeks (42 days) with no new cases.