Health officials across Africa are working to determine how Nigeria’s first Ebola patient in more than a decade became infected, amid fears the outbreak could spread further after reaching a fourth African country.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry said Friday that the patient in Nigeria, the Ugandan-born wife of an Abuja-based Swiss diplomat, had not traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the outbreak was first detected in mid-May before spreading to Uganda, Kenya and now Nigeria. The woman is believed to have contracted the Ebola virus while traveling with her husband in Uganda, the ministry added.
The new information contradicts Ugandan accounts, which previously claimed the woman had traveled to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and will raise concerns about authorities’ ability to contain the outbreak, which is already the most geographically widespread in history.
The Ugandan government reported Ebola cases in May and June before the WHO declared the country Ebola-free in August. A Ugandan government spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday that Uganda had no cases of Ebola and if it did, it would make the information public.
The World Health Organization said investigations were continuing to establish the likely source of the Ebola patient’s infection in Nigeria.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating whether the patient may have come into contact with an Ebola patient in Kenya when they were both traveling from Uganda’s Entebbe airport on October 3, said Dr. Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response at the organization.
Catherine Smallwood, WHO Ebola incident manager in DR Congo, told a UN briefing in Geneva via video link on Friday that WHO staff in DR Congo had no information showing that the patient in Nigeria had visited the country.
Smallwood said a link to the Kenya case was possible, but added that authorities should compare the timing with when the Nigerian patient’s symptoms began to determine whether the infection likely occurred at the Ugandan airport or elsewhere.
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist and member of the WHO’s Ebola emergency committee, cast doubt on this theory. “I think it’s very speculative unless there’s evidence of sharing the same space in a way that could explain this,” she said. “A random presence in the same location, a large airport, does not constitute an epidemiological link supported by any standard of what we currently know.”
Nigerian Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate said Nigeria’s case remained under control and contact tracing was continuing. “We’re trying to contain it so it doesn’t spread to communities. Hopefully that won’t happen and we’re working hard to make that happen,” Pate said.
Melaku Yirga, vice president for Africa at Prosper Global (formerly Mercy Corps), said the confirmation of Ebola in Kenya and Nigeria reinforces the need for countries to work closely to prevent further transmission.
“What matters most now is speed, sharing information across borders without delay and ensuring that frontline health workers and local organizations have the resources to respond quickly,” he said.
Ebola is a highly contagious and often fatal viral disease that affects humans and non-human primates. It is spread through bodily fluids or contaminated materials and causes organ damage, damage to blood vessels, and sometimes serious internal and external bleeding.
The current outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, for which there is no approved treatment or vaccine. It was first announced on May 15 and has infected more than 9,500 people and killed nearly half of them.
The outbreak is the largest and deadliest in the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the second largest in the world behind the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa, which infected more than 28,600 people and killed more than 11,000.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
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