Suspected Ebola case in Ndop tested negative

Medical officials at the Centre Pasteur in Yaoundé yesterday, Thursday Nov. 13, formerly issued a report in respect to the case of a 22 year old boy who died in Ndop district hospital Wednesday, suspected of Ebola virus.

The result came out negative – the boy didn’t die of Ebola virus as was initially feared.

The boy, Etome Edeme, 22, had been brought into Ndop District Hospital from a Yaoundé hospital after falling sick and manifesting severe Ebola-like symptoms for six days. He arrived the Ndop hospital Tuesday Nov. 11. The following day – Wednesday Nov. 12, he died and was hastily buried by officials of Ndop Council.

As news of the arrival of the boy in the hospital made rounds in the town thanks to nurses that work there, panic griped the entire municipality. Things were not helped as the hospital authorities kept sealed lips.

When the Journal first contacted the medical director of the hospital that Wednesday, he will neither confirm the case of an Ebola patient nor deny it. But he won’t release any information either. Rather he told our source that the matter wasn’t within his competence – that we contact the Senior Divisional Officer, SDO, for Ndop. But the SDO was nowhere within reach.

Once the report from Centre Pasteur emerged yesterday, it was not until then that all Ndop municipal authorities including the medical director took to the media explaining what had transpired.

They confirmed that the boy, Etome Edeme was brought into Ndop from Yaoundé and that he had been suffering from fever for about six days. He was admitted to Ndop hospital and because of the Ebola-like symptoms that he was manifesting, the medical director; Dr. Bambo Emmanuel Ngala, for safety reasons resolved his case be treated as one with Ebola until proven otherwise.

The Regional Delegation of Health in Bamenda was informed and a team from there sent down to Ndop hospital to assist. But unfortunately the boy died early that Wednesday and all the team from Bamenda did was to disinfect the entire hospital and the nurses that had attended to the patient.

Acting on the assumption that he died of Ebola, Ndop authorities took it upon themselves for safety purposes to bury the boy and not hand the corpse to the family.

After the burial, a specimen earlier collected was taken to Centre Pasteur same day and the results released yesterday at about 13hrs. GMT. The results were communicated to Dr.Ngala and he delivered it to the Mayor of Ndop, Mbombo Abel Chenyi.

Speaking to a local radio station in Ndop after receiving the report from Yaounde, Dr. Ngala disclosed that the boy’s situation was due to drug abuse, citing alcohol and marijuana. He said Edeme, who until death was working for a construction company in Yaounde was said to be a drug addict.

Also reacting after the test results came out negative of Ebola, Ndop Divisional Delegate of Communication, Manfred Likine officially declared Ndop free of Ebola and asked the community to go back to work in serenity.

When the Journal visited the family compound of the deceased, the father, Etome Augustine, a retired social worker, was very disturbed with the stigma that the son’s death has brought to the family and said he wasn’t ready for an interview.

However, in the presence of family members he resigned to fate stating “It was designed by God” that his son “should die and be buried in that manner.” Edeme died with blood bleeding out of his nostrils and coupled with other signs that he manifested the medical director and the council said they way they handled the incident was justifiable.

FROM THE EDITOR: When we first published this story, most of the facts we now have were not available. And that is normal when you are dealing with a breaking story. Did we mislead the public? Maybe by the headline, but not by the story itself.

When you get a breaking story and you know that you know it’s true based on the source, in the rush to get it out there, it’s very easy to make such errors as we did in being OVERZEALOUS, ASSERTIVE and AUTHOURITATIVE with the caption of the story.

Having a second chance, we would have titled the story “Boy 22 Suspected of Ebola Virus Dies in Cameroon, Hastily Buried in Ndop.”

Words are powerful and they can easily send a wrong message. That’s exactly what happened here. However, other than this, we’re proud of our reporting – the facts are correct.

- A boy was rushed to Ndop with Ebola symptoms

- He died the following day

- Family was denied the corpse

- Council authorities hastily buried the boy ever before they confirmed it wasn’t Ebola

- A delegation from Bamenda was sent to the Ndop hospital to disinfect it and the nurses that worked on the boy – where did we go wrong here?

We at the Cameroon Journal take what we do very seriously. We know that there are thousands out there that depend on this media for most of their news from Cameroon. For that we do due diligence in facts checking before putting up stories.

Occasionally, we may get the headline wrong,- but that will always happen in a news circle made too small by the information superhighway were news breaks and one has very little time to think before putting it online.

But any time that happens, you can rest assured that you will get our apology.

That’s how serious we take it here. If we were anything contrary to this, we won’t be approving of all the negative comments we have allowed on the story. We could just have trash them and nobody will know.

As per the photograph in the story. In Journalism, photographs are not necessarily used to depict exact events as described in a story. What matter is whether the photo is relevant to the story. And in this particular case, we were reporting of a potential Ebola death in Cameroon and since the country hasn’t witnessed one before, we thought it necessary to use the Liberian photo.

Even so, the photo was very appropriately labeled. We didn’t by any means pretend that the photo was of the dead boy being buried in Ndop. It was clearly labeled “FILE PHOTO” and venue where it was taken indicated as Liberia. Nothing ethically wrong here.