The Federal Government of Nigeria has given a clue to what might have killed a 21-year-old male student of the University of Calabar, who was suspected to have died of Ebola Virus Disease. It said the deceased died of “metallic poisoning.The government have specifically said that it came out with that verdict after it received the result of confirmation test on the cause of the deceased death.
The Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health, Mr. Linus Awute, made the clarification in Abuja during an interview with The PUNCH.According to him, what killed the student who was diagnosed with suspected case of hemorrhagic fever on October 7, 2015 ,had to do with the management of his “lifestyle in terms of what he ate or what he took, which happens now and then.”
The government had notified the nation that preliminary tests carried out on the blood samples of the patient confirmed that the deceased was negative to both the Ebola virus and the Lassa fever virus.About three weeks ago, government had also stated that additional tests, using next generation sequencing methods, were going to be carried out at the Redeemers University African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Ede, Osun State, to confirm which virus must have caused the infection and the subsequent death of the UNICAL student.But Awute insisted that the UNICAL student died of “metallic poisoning” and not Ebola Virus Disease.
