I’m scared! Nurse who handled suspected Ebola patient

A Ghanaian Nurse, who was the first to have handled a deceased Burkinabe patient suspected to have had Ebola, has confessed to StarrFMonline.com that he has lived in fear ever since.

“We’re scared. We just pray that it shouldn’t be Ebola," Muhammed Sakiru StarrFMonline.com in an interview Sunday.

He said though he wore hand gloves while testing the patient’s pulse that Wednesday, he still harbours fears.

The deceased patient, who has since been buried at Cinkanduri in neighbouring Burkina Faso, was rushed in to the Bawku Presby Hospital in Ghana’s Upper East region with fever, coupled with bleeding from his nostrils and ears – symptoms of Ebola.

Being the Nurse on duty at the time, Sakiru tended to the patient at the emergency unit. “But I got alarmed and asked everybody to get back upon learning that he had been brought all the way from Burkina Faso without any referral papers," Sakiru said.

He said the hospital advised the relatives and the taxi driver who transported the patient to Bawku through the Pusiga border, to put the body in plastic bags as a precautionary measure against possible infection from any disease.

Blood samples have been taken from the deceased for study at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the University of Ghana.