The late Patrick Sawyer who was Nigeria’s index case for the Ebola virus was actually under surveillance by the Liberian health authorities, even though he still managed to board a flight heading outside his country.
The Minister of State II for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Nurudeen Mohammed said this while relaying a conversation between Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson and Nigeria’s Ambassador to Liberia, Ambassador Chigozie Oby-Nadozie.
According to Mohammed, President Sirleaf Johnson in a telephone conversation with Nadozie had expressed regrets at the circumstances through which the virus had been brought to Nigeria by Sawyer who was under surveillance.
Mohammed at a briefing for members of the diplomatic corps in Abuja Thursday on the Ebola virus however noted that there was no time for placing blame, but for collaboration to combat and stop the spread of the deadly virus which has now killed over 900 according to figures from the World Health Organisation.
ECOWAS Vice President, Dr Toga Mcintosh confirmed that Sawyer escaped from quarantine in Liberia to fly to Nigeria.
Speaking with journalists at the end of the briefing, Mcintosh said “”because he had contact with somebody who died from Ebola, he was quarantined in his own country but he evaded the quarantine and came to Nigeria.”
The Liberian media has also been awash with reports that the late Sawyer looked “terribly ill” and might have known he was infected with the virus before traveling to Nigeria.
According to a review of Close Circuit Television (CCTV) images at the James Spriggs Payne’s Airport, Monrovia, by Liberian newspaper, The New Dawn, Sawyer, who is also a naturalised American, looked terribly ill and deliberately avoided contacts with people just before boarding the Asky Airline flight that brought him to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos.
Describing his behaviour as “strange”, the The New Dawn said Sawyer bore a “sad countenance” like he was troubled and sat alone avoiding bodily contact with other passengers who came close to him at the boarding gate of the James Sprigg Payne’s Airport as he awaits his flight to Lagos.
Some ECOWAS officials and airport staff helped him out of the airplane and rushed him to First Consultant Medical Centre, Obalende, where he died two days later.
“His strange behaviour and frequent movement up and down as he eagerly awaits his Asky flight had prompted the security camera operator to focus on him. In the video, Patrick could be seen avoiding physical contacts with airport employees and other passengers during the check in process,” the newspaper wrote.
Airport video footage, according to the report, also showed Sawyer lying flat on his stomach on the floor in the corridor of the airport and seemed to be in “excruciating pain.”
According to the The New Dawn reporter who reviewed the video, he even snubbed an Immigration officer who initiated a friendly gesture of a handshake moments before he boarded the airplane.
FrontPage Africa, another Liberian newspaper, is also reporting that Sawyer, who is believed to have been infected by his sister who died of Ebola told its reporter soon before he travelled to Nigeria that he had gone in search of his sister’s husband who ran away after she tested positive for Ebola.
The paper said Sawyer vomited a few times among his friends in Liberian just before heading to the airport and also on the plane.
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