The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control Projector, Dr. Abdulsalami Nasidi, has disclosed that the health ministry is monitoring about 400 people in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, for signs of Ebola virus disease.

Nasidi added that these people are being placed under observation after they came in contact with the late medical doctor, Iyke Enemuo, who died of the disease in Port Harcourt on 22 August, 2014.

These details were stated by Nasidi on Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland, during a two-day World Health Organisation experts meeting aimed at speeding development of Ebola drugs and vaccines.

Nasidi noted that there was a sense of “hopelessness” due to the lack of proven drugs or vaccines to treat the deadly disease that had infected 18 people in Nigeria.

The Nigerian health expert also told Reuters in an interview that more isolation wards were being opened in the oil industry hub but voiced confidence that there would not be “many cases” there.

It was gathered that before the late Enemuo died, he kept on treating patients and met scores of friends, relatives and medics after contacting the virus, leaving about 60 people at high risk of infection.

The doctor’s wife, who is also a physician, and a patient in the same hospital had been infected with Ebola.

“Everything about this doctor was in secrecy, he violated our public health laws by treating a patient with a highly pathogenic agent who revealed to him that he had contact with Ebola and didn’t want to be treated in Lagos because he might be put in isolation.

“He treated him in secrecy outside hospital premises. When he became ill he did not reveal to his colleagues that he had contact with someone who contracted Ebola. He was taken to General Hospital, a public hospital that sees everybody.

“That is the only case that effectively escaped our surveillance network. We are paying now for it,” Nasidi said.

He added that: “People are living in a state of hopelessness seeing the disease has no cure and no vaccine but has great potential to spread”.

Nasidi said the Port Harcourt doctor was visited by friends and family in hospital, including some who “laid hands” on him.

“As we are talking now, we have more than 380 of such contacts in our dragnet,” he said. Those at high risk are being quarantined, and some 500 volunteers and health care workers are checking on all exposed people twice a day,” he said.

According to Nasidi, a 28-bed isolation ward for Ebola patients has been opened in Port Harcourt, which is home to many expatriate workers in major international oil companies.

He said most of the exposed contacts were near the end of the 21-incubation period for the disease, which starts with fever and muscle pain, followed by vomiting and diarrhoea.

“So we are monitoring and are sure we shan’t miss out on any contacts that come out with infection that could be transmitted. A contact, who has no symptoms doesn’t transmit even if he has the virus. So this is why we are hopeful,” he said.

No fewer than seven people have died from Ebola virus in Nigeria since the late Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian diplomat, brought the virus to Lagos on 20 July, 2014.