As Ebola patient is sent to America, disease may have jumped quarantine in Nigeria

The regional death toll for the Ebola outbreak that has been ravaging parts of Africa since January 2014 has grown to 887, and news that one of the doctors treating patients in Nigeria has also contracted the disease is presenting a dire challenge to authorities.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Nigerian health authorities have rushed to quarantine others who have been exposed, and a special plane carrying the second American to become infected, 59-year-old missionary Nancy Writebol, left Liberia to arrive in Atlanta on August 5.

Please do your best to help those infected with this disease.

The infected Nigerian doctor contracted the illness from Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer who died on July 25, and three others who treated Sawyer also show symptoms of Ebola, though test results are pending.

Authorities are trying to trace and quarantine others in Lagos, a city of 21 million, sub-Saharan Africa's second largest city.

"This cluster of cases in Lagos, Nigeria is very concerning," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention, which has dispatched 50 experienced disease control specialists to West Africa to help contain the outbreak.

"It shows what happens if meticulous infection control, contact tracing, and proper isolation of patients with suspected Ebola is not done. Stopping the spread in Lagos will be difficult but it can be done," he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) had announced on August 4 that the death toll has increased from 729 to 887 in the African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

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