An air ambulance has reportedly evacuated Nigeria’s confirmed Ebola patient out of the country.
ARISE News reported on Monday that the patient, described as the wife of a Swiss diplomat, was flown out early in the morning from the private jet wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
In a post on its X handle, the station said: “The index patient diagnosed with Ebola virus in Nigeria has been evacuated from the country early this morning through an air ambulance at the private jet wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport.”
According to the report, the station was tipped off that the patient “would be flown out of Nigeria by 6am this morning through a medivac plane which was already at the airport waiting to evacuate her.”
ARISE News said its crew deployed to the General Aviation Terminal later obtained pictures of a convoy of ambulances arriving from the city centre with diplomatic vehicles in the entourage.
“The three-vehicle convoy had an international Agency vehicle entering the Private Jet section” of the airport, the report stated.
It added that airport officials cordoned off the private wing, but its crew “eventually obtained videos of a medivac plane with crews eventually evacuating the sick passenger suspected to be the Ebola index case due to the special nature of the medical evacuation.”
The station further quoted a source as saying that “the Federal Government will make the announcement of the medical evacuation only after the plane has taken off and exited the Nigerian airspace.”
The Federal Government had on October 20 confirmed a case of Ebola virus in the Federal Capital Territory, saying contacts had been identified and placed under monitoring as part of containment measures.
As of press time, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, NCDC, and the Federal Ministry of Health had not officially confirmed the reported evacuation.
