Liberian Ebola Virus Victim Was On His Way To America Via Nigeria To Unite With Family

It has been learnt that Ebola victim who sparked fears of a global outbreak was a Liberian American and was going to visit his children in Minnesota

His wife back in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, has revealed he was due home in August.

Decontee Sawyer, 34, said her husband caught the virus from his sister in Liberia

The couple are originally from Liberia and have family in the US and West Africa
Nearly 700 people have been killed by the virus across West Africa

Two American aid workers in Liberia have also tested positive for the virus and are being treated there.

Nancy Writebol, from Charlotte, North Carolina, has the incurable disease
Kent Brantly was treating Ebola patients in Monrovia, Liberia when he recognized he had the symptoms

 

The Ebola victim who sparked fears that a historic outbreak of the disease could spread globally was an American citizen, it was revealed last night.

Patrick Sawyer died this week after becoming noticeably ill on a flight from Liberia in West Africa, where the worst ever outbreak of Ebola is gathering pace, to the city of Lagos in Nigeria.

His case sparked alarm across the globe because he was able to board an international flight while carrying the incurable disease – potentially infecting other passengers who could fly across the world in a nightmare scenario for health experts.

But his death in Lagos, Africa’s most populous city, has health workers scrambling to trace those who may have been exposed to him across West Africa, including flight attendants and fellow passengers.

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His devastated wife, Decontee Sawyer, 34, shudders when she thinks how close Sawyer came to returning home to the States for his daughters’ birthdays carrying the dreaded virus.

‘It’s a global problem because Patrick could’ve easily come home with Ebola,’ Decontee said to KSTP. ‘Easy. Easy. It’s close, it’s at our front door. It knocked down my front door.’
On the way home: Patrick Sawyer with his wife Decontee – the couple were expecting to be reunited next month for two of their daughters’ birthdays
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On the way home: Patrick Sawyer with his wife Decontee – the couple were expecting to be reunited next month for two of their daughters’ birthdays

The risk of travelers contracting Ebola is considered low because it requires direct contact with bodily fluids or secretions such as urine, blood, sweat or saliva, experts say. Ebola can’t be spread like flu through casual contact or breathing in the same air.

Patients are contagious only once the disease has progressed to the point they show symptoms, according to the WHO. And the most vulnerable are health care workers and relatives who come in much closer contact with the sick.

Still, witnesses say Sawyer, a 40-year-old Liberian Finance Ministry employee en route to a conference in Nigeria, was vomiting and had diarrhea aboard at least one of his flights with some 50 other passengers aboard. Ebola can be contracted from traces of feces or vomit, experts say.

Sawyer was immediately quarantined upon arrival in Lagos – a city of 21 million people – and Nigerian authorities say his fellow travelers were advised of Ebola’s symptoms and then were allowed to leave. The incubation period can be as long as 21 days, meaning anyone infected may not fall ill for several weeks.

Health officials rely on ‘contact tracing’ – locating anyone who may have been exposed, and then anyone who may have come into contact with that person.

That may prove impossible, given that other passengers journeyed on to dozens of other cities.

Global worries: The death of Patrick Sawyer after an international flight between Liberia and Nigeria has sparked fears that he could have unwittingly spread the Ebola virus

Global worries: The death of Patrick Sawyer after an international flight between Liberia and Nigeria has sparked fears that he could have unwittingly spread the Ebola virus
Two Americans working in Africa are being treated for ebola

Sawyer, who worked for the Liberian Finance Ministry married his wife Decontee in December 2008, in Coon Rapids.

The couple, who both hold US citizenship are originally from Liberia and Decontee arrived in the country with her family in 1991 and Patrick came in the early 2000s.

The couple are part of the large Liberian community in Minnesota, who moved there in the aftermath of the nation’s two civil wars in the 1980s and late 1990s.

His job had taken him back to West Africa to promote economic development there and he was last in the United States in September said Decontee to the Pioneer Press.

Decontee learned he was ill with Ebola on Thursday and then on Friday she was told her husband of six years had passed away from the virus.

Distraught, Decontee said that she had come forward to share her husband’s fate so that the public can understand how quickly the virus can spread.

‘Patrick was coming here. What if he still wasn’t displaying symptoms yet and came?’ Sawyer asked, according to the Pioneer Press.

‘He could have brought Ebola here. Someone else could bring Ebola here.’

Health experts say it is unlikely Sawyer could have infected others with the virus that can cause victims to bleed from the eyes, mouth and ears.

Still, unsettling questions remain: How could a man whose sister recently died from Ebola manage to board a plane leaving the country?

And worse: Could Ebola become the latest disease to be spread by international air travel