First fatality of Ebola registered in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

A doctor died because of the Ebola virus in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, which makes it the first fatality registered outside Lagos, where five people have died because of the disease.

The victim, Ike Enemuo, attended a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which maintained direct contact with Patrick Sawyer, the first fatality of Ebola in Nigeria, said in a press conference the Commissioner of Health Rivers State (whose capital is Port Harcourt), Sampson Parker.

Another member of ECOWAS, Jatto Asihu Abdulqudir, who maintained contact with Sawyer on his arrival to the airport, also later died in Lagos because of the disease.

The spread of Ebola outside Lagos represents a step backwards in the efforts to fight the virus in Nigeria, where the World Health Organization (WHO) recently noted that the transmission of the disease had been contained.