A South African woman identified as Folswe Elizabeth Maria was arrested at the Lagos International Airport after showing symptoms of the deadly Ebola Virus Disease, DailyPost has reported.
The woman who touched down at the Murtala Muhammed Airport aboard an Air Marok flight which arrived from Casablanca, Morocco.
The woman was thereafter detained by security bio-hazard officials, after she reportedly tested positive for the disease.
“This person has been in Guinea and Sierra Leone since April … she has symptoms,” Dr. Morenike Alex-Okoh, director of Port Health Services at Lagos airport, told Reuters.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has instituted Ebola screening, including infra-red temperature scans and symptoms checks, at its airports and ports after a Liberian-American infected with the disease brought it to Lagos in July after flying from Liberia. His is one of seven deaths recorded so far out of 19 confirmed cases in Nigeria.
“Nigeria cannot afford another ‘importation’ (of Ebola),” said Dr. Aileen Marty, a professor of infectious diseases at Florida International University College of Medicine.
Marty is working with Nigerian health authorities, under the auspices of the World Health Organisation (WHO), to maintain port of entry Ebola checks across the African oil producer.
She told Reuters the fact that the South African traveller displayed several Ebola-like symptoms and had been in the high-risk zone justified her being treated as a suspected case. But such symptoms are also present in other diseases, such as malaria and cholera, hence the need for a specific Ebola test.