Welcome to Ebere Samuel's Blog: deadly Ebola virus disease

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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img alt="Dennis" class="attachment-thumbnail-single-image wp-post-image" height="400" src="http://ynaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Dennis.jpg" width="400" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><i><br /></i>The fiancé of late Justina Obi Ejelonu, the 29-year old nurse who was part of the team that treated Patrick Sawyer but gave up the ghost recently has spoken.<br />He shared a powerful story of how he refused to abandon his fiancé despite her being diagnosed with Ebola.<br />He revealed that Justina lost a two-month pregnancy, vomited severally on him while she collapsed and had to be carried to hospital by him.<br /><i>Dennis said when Justina contracted the disease, she was with him and he was solely responsible for her. When she fell ill, I took her to the hospital. She vomited severally on me on our way and also collapsed. I had to carry her when she collapsed till we got to there. She was two months pregnant, he said. When she tested positive she was ‘abandoned’ at the hospital and left to her fate, but I occasionally went in to take care of her, he narrated.</i><br /><a href="" name="more"></a></span><div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_291385" style="width: 235px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://ynaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ebola-justina.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Justina Ejelonu, was a part of Dr. Adadevoh's team. She passed away a few days before the doctor." class="size-medium wp-image-291385" height="300" src="http://ynaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ebola-justina-225x300.jpg" style="border: none; position: relative;" width="225" /></a></span></span><div class="wp-caption-text">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Justina Ejelonu, was a part of Dr. Adadevoh’s team. She passed away a few days before the doctor.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">After, Justina was admitted he hung around the hospital , occasionally going into the Ebola ward cater for her as <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD6">nurses</span> and doctors abandoned the nurse to her fate at the treatment centre.<br />Fourteen days after Justina died, Dennis had high <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD11">temperature</span>, instead of panicking he turned himself in to the treatment centre for observation.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">An initial test led the centre to quarantine him, and a second test came positive <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD12">leading</span> the centre to admit him to treatment but he was discharged hours ago, after his third test came out negative.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He walked off the centre in good health according top doctors who spoke anonymously with Saharareporters.</span></div>
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'She vomited on me & lost her 2-month pregnancy' - Late nurse Justina’s fiance talks about surviving Ebola

The fiancé of late Justina Obi Ejelonu, the 29-year old nurse who was part of the team that treated Patrick Sawyer but gave up the ghost...

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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Dr Melvin Korkor tells the Telegraph he felt 'reborn' after surviving Ebola and is now campaigning to convince infected Liberians to seek help sooner.</span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Like every other medic trying to fight the spread of west Africa's deadly Ebola outbreak, Dr Melvin Korkor knows the importance of reassuring a panicking public. Despite its high fatality rate, and the belief that it is the work of witchcraft, his message is that victims may well pull through if they are treated early enough.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yet when he tells that to fellow Liberians these days, one thing gives him a unique credibility in winning them over. For not only did Dr Korkor come down with Ebola himself recently, he lived to tell the tale.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He revealed his remarkable story of survival in an interview with The Telegraph at Phebe Hospital in Liberia's remote Bong County, where an outbreak of the virus last month saw him and five nurses rushed to an isolation unit in the capital, Monrovia.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The virus had hit the hospital after a woman suffering diarrhoea came in for treatment, lying to staff about the fact that she was from neighbouring Lofa County, where the Ebola outbreak has been at its worst. By the time she died three days later, it was already too late.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><sup><img caption="" copyright="Will Wintercross/The Telegraph" declared-caption="" height="287" name="Dr-Melvin-Korkor" photographer="" refid="3008878" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03008/Dr-Melvin-Korkor_3008878c.jpg" style="border: 0px; display: inline; overflow: hidden;" version="c" width="460" /></sup><br /><sup>Dr Melvin Korkor (Will Wintercross/The Telegraph)</sup></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"By then, some of the nurses who had treated her had come down with a very high fever," said Dr Korkor, 42, who is now on three month's leave.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"They were tested for Ebola and confirmed positive. I knew I had had interaction with the patient and the nurses myself, and so I asked for one of my blood samples to be sent for testing too.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"I also started having unusual feelings myself – low grade fever, nausea, and loss of appetite. It felt a bit like malaria, but I knew that within myself that something was not normal."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When he was summonsed to the offices of Phebe's medical director to be told the results, his worst fears were confirmed. But Dr Korkor knew that while the virus has a mortality rate of 60-90 per cent, those who treat the symptoms early – a matter of keeping the body well-watered and nourished – improve their survival chances.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"I asked the hospital to get an ambulance to take me to Monrovia," he said. "Then I told my wife get me a Bible and nothing else. She started to cry, but I told her 'no crying, I am coming back'."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img alttext="Phebe Hospital " caption="Phebe Hospital " copyright="Will Wintercross/The Telegraph" declared-caption="" height="287" name="ebola-Phebe_Hospital" photographer="" refid="3008583" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03008/ebola-Phebe_Hospit_3008583c.jpg" style="border: 0px; display: inline; overflow: hidden;" version="c" width="460" /><br /><sup>Phebe Hospital (Will Wintercross/The Telegraph)</sup></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On arrival at Monrovia's Elwa Hospital, Dr Korkor was assessed again at a hermetically sealed unit where patients are treated by medics in boiler suits, goggles and masks. He was checked into the bed of a patient that had just died.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What followed was a lonely, frightening experience. While each patient had their own private cubicle, Dr Korkor knew his colleagues were losing the fight. It was then that he began putting his faith in ancient scripture as well as modern medicine, reading Psalm 91 from his Bible, which refers to how God will protect his followers from "noisome pestilence" and "any plague come nigh thy dwelling".</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Four days in, he was tested again. This time it was negative. "It was like being reborn," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The ordeal was not quite over, however. Upon his discharge, he returned to Bong County, where he found other people quite literally avoiding him "like the plague".</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As he told a local radio station: "Thanks to God, I am cured. But now I have a new disease: the stigmatisation that I am a victims of."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is precisely that sort of public misunderstanding that Dr Korkor is now trying to correct, aware that the more the fear and ignorance surrounding Ebola, the more it will spread unchecked. It has already claimed more than 1,000 lives across Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hence Dr Korkor's visit to his local church last Sunday, where he gave a speech about how he survived his ordeal. In a country of devout Christians, the tale of a man who all but risen from the dead has no shortage of resonance. But while he delivered "special thanks to God for saving my life", he stressed to the congregation that it was down to science, not miracles.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"The only reason I survived is because I went to get help earlier," he said. "I want to tell the whole world that Ebola is real, and if you start to feel ill, please get tested straightaway."</span></div>
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