--- title: Ebola Outbreak: Nigeria Braces for More Cases in Lagos description: A bustling capital city tries to avoid becoming the next Ebola hotspot canonical: https://time.com/3089072/ebola-outbreak-nigeria-lagos/ author: Maram Mazen article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-07T16:31:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:55.796Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola Outbreak: Nigeria Braces for More Cases in Lagos og:description: A bustling capital city tries to avoid becoming the next Ebola hotspot og:url: https://time.com/3089072/ebola-outbreak-nigeria-lagos/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0de08774a5da04f4/69869eb3cd6848db7d095f67/ebola-nigeria.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2000 og:image:height: 1125 og:image:alt: West Africa Ebola og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola Outbreak: Nigeria Braces for More Cases in Lagos twitter:description: A bustling capital city tries to avoid becoming the next Ebola hotspot twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0de08774a5da04f4/69869eb3cd6848db7d095f67/ebola-nigeria.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Nigeria Braces for More Ebola Cases Amid Outbreak > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=f4111f58-9289-4d7b-b709-00378f40b50d&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Suits Protect Doctors From Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): How Suits Protect Doctors From Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/O5USUvDI.m3u8) (2:12)  _Published 2014-08-04. While people rely on doctors to stop the Ebola outbreaks in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, doctors rely on suits to protect them._ by [Maram Mazen / Lagos](https://time.com/author/maram-mazen/) ## Maram Mazen / Lagos Aug 7, 2014 4:31 PM UTC  A Nigerian port health official speaks to a passenger at the arrivals hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, Aug. 6, 2014. A Nigerian port health official speaks to a passenger at the arrivals hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, Aug. 6, 2014. Sunday Alamba—AP by [Maram Mazen / Lagos](https://time.com/author/maram-mazen/) ## Maram Mazen / Lagos Aug 7, 2014 4:31 PM UTC Until last week, many Nigerians largely ignored West Africa’s Ebola outbreak: It was several countries away and didn’t seem like an immediate threat. That changed after a Liberian-American named Patrick Sawyer boarded a plane in Liberia while ill with the disease, crossed four countries by air, landed in Lagos, and then collapsed at the airport. Sawyer died in Lagos days later on July 25, but while being treated he infected at least six other people, including a nurse who died Aug. 5\. Suddenly, the government has come under pressure to quickly raise awareness and prepare facilities for more potential cases—all while grappling with a strike by public sector doctors. The stakes are high. Lagos is Nigeria’s commercial capital and biggest city with 21 million people, in Africa’s most populous country of more than 170 million people. An outbreak in Lagos could bring Africa’s crisis to a whole new level. Lagos sate health commissioner Jide Idris said this week that doctors didn’t initially realize Sawyer was infected with Ebola, a virus with symptoms similar to other tropical diseases. The government is now screening travelers, obtaining isolation tents in case they receive new cases, and establishing an emergency operations center, while the other five patients with confirmed cases of Ebola are treated in isolation at a Lagos hospital. But containing the deadly disease takes vigilance. The government’s main focus at the moment is screening incoming and outgoing passengers, treating already ill people in isolation and monitoring people with whom they’ve come in contact. As soon as people who were exposed develop symptoms, they are put in quarantine and tested for Ebola. Health experts say people infected with the virus only become contagious after they develop symptoms, and the virus has an incubation period of up to three weeks. The government was following a total of 70 people who had primary contact with Sawyer, but the number of people being monitored is growing as the government tracks more people who were in contact with the six infected patients before they showed symptoms. “It is possible in the first day, probably the second day, in the course of doing this, a lot of those health workers got infected,” Idris told reporters in Lagos. The doctors isolated him “immediately when they realized that ‘Oh this man came from Liberia.’ … That’s when they alerted us.” All of the people infected in Lagos had direct contact with Sawyer. But more help is needed to contain the disease in Nigeria. “We need volunteers now, extremely necessary, urgently needed, to assist us in tracking the contacts,” Idris said. “And more importantly to manage those cases that are already in isolation in order to give them a chance for life they need to be properly managed, so we need doctors, we need nurses, environmental health workers.” Still, the outbreak hasn’t affected daily life in the economic hub of Africa’s largest economy. Even as some concerns mount among government officials, many people say they’re not worried. “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe what people are saying that is happening in Nigeria,” said 28-year-old Christopher Ukpang, a security guard at an upscale Lagos supermarket. “I’m begging my fellow Nigerians, they should not be afraid of this sickness, it won’t affect us. We should have trust in God.” Interest spiked after health authorities announced the first confirmed case of Ebola infection of a Nigerian on Aug. 4—and the local media coverage exploded. “I’m worried about it,” said one Nigerian woman. “In my office they sent out an updated mail to everybody to be very careful and to wash your hand regularly and use the sanitizer.” Eunice Ojodu, a 50-year-old fruit seller in the city, said she had heard about the disease in awareness messages the government is broadcasting on TV and radio. “It’s killing people but I haven’t seen it,” she said. “I haven’t seen it and I don’t pray to see it.” ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] We touch our face about 1, 000 times a day. And these suits are about 115, 116 degrees you can, and you're losing three to five liters of sweat every time you go in, inside these suits. You can imagine. That you just want to rub your eyes or rub the sweat from your face, and you can't do that because that's an opportunity to come into contact with the virus. I was recently deployed on behalf of the World Health Organization to to Guinea to help with the Ebola outbreak. When you're providing care to patients, you're constantly being exposed to blood, vomit, diarrhea, every bodily fluid that's there. I'm sure you've seen pictures of the personal protection equipment or PPE that we're required to wear. We start with a base layer of scrubs, and then these thick rubber boots that come up to our knees. It's on top of the scrubs and the boots, we actually wear, an impermeable Tyvek suit, that, is incredibly hot. And then we also wear two pairs of gloves. On top of the tivex suit we have to put a hood, that is an impermeable hood that covers every other part of our, part of our head. We have to wear a respirator that covers our nose and our mouth, and then finally a pair of goggles that cover, cover our eyes on top of the hood. So basically, literally nothing is left uncovered. So that's just getting dressed. The PPE itself is, is a good first step. But even with all these protective equipments you're still handling needles. And you're still being exposed to, to patients' body fluids. We talk a lot about how how difficult the working conditions are. And how hot it and how restrictive these suits are but, I would say it comes nowhere near the difficult experience that it must be to be a patient. To be infected with it. Or to be the loved one of a patient who's going through that. And for me, that's something that I always think about. [ MUSIC ] That's the thing about this virus, it's actually... I hate to say the word easy, but it's really easy to control. 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