FAISALABAD: All doctors, nurses and paramedical staff of Allied Hospital, who attended the suspected Ebola patient recently, will go through a blood screening.

Zulfiqar Ali, who was suspected to have contracted the Ebola virus but was cleared by the World Health Organisation, was under treatment at Allied Hospital for three days and passed away on Monday.

Know more: Ebola scare — Faisalabad man died of dengue, hepatitis: NHSRC

As many as 65 employees of the hospital, including assistant professor, medical officers and PGRs of medical units, staff and student nurses of the medical unit, isolation ward and emergency ward, eight paramedics and ward boys and sanitary workers, would be asked to provide their blood samples.

Staff of the pathology laboratory had been assigned duties through a notification to collect blood samples of the staff who had attended Ali.

Hosppital Medical Superintendent Dr Rashid Maqbool told Dawn blood samples were being collected for baseline test that would present a clear picture of their blood.

He further said collection of blood samples had nothing to do with Ebola as the WHO and National Institute of Health, Islamabad had categorically announced Ali had not contracted the virus.

Ali returned to Pakistan from Togo on Nov 16 after three years. He had been suffering from fever and remained under the treatment in Chiniot, his native town. However, when he saw no signs of recovery, he was shifted to Allied Hospital on Nov 22 where he was first treated at the medical emergency then the medical ward.

He was finally shifted to an isolation ward when senior doctors detected that he had been suffering from viral haemorrhagic fever.

District Coordination Officer Noorul Ameen Mengal said Ali was suffering from viral haemorrhagic fever and as per the WHO guidelines those who had close contact with him should be kept under observation for at least 21 days.

Published in Dawn, November 29th , 2014