ABUJA — Health authorities across Africa are working to determine how Nigeria's first Ebola patient in more than 10 years became infected. The case marks the virus's spread to a fourth African country in the current outbreak.
The Swiss foreign ministry said Friday that the patient, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja, did not travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ministry stated she was believed to have contracted Ebola while traveling with her husband in Uganda.
This contradicts earlier accounts from Uganda, which had indicated the woman traveled to eastern DR Congo. The discrepancy highlights challenges in tracing the outbreak, which began in mid-May in DR Congo before reaching Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria.
Dr. Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said both the Nigerian patient and a confirmed Ebola case in Kenya traveled from Uganda's Entebbe airport on Oct. 3. This shared travel route is a key focus of the investigation.
Catherine Smallwood, a WHO Ebola incident manager in DR Congo, told a UN briefing in Geneva that WHO staff in DR Congo had no information indicating the Nigerian patient traveled to that country. Smallwood said a link to the Kenya case was possible but acknowledged the need to compare the timing of the Nigerian patient's symptom onset with the shared airport presence.
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist and member of the WHO's Ebola emergency committee, expressed skepticism about the airport theory. "Random presence at the same location, a large airport, is not a supported epidemiological link by any standard of what we currently know," Koopmans said.
Uganda reported Ebola cases in May and June, but the WHO declared the country Ebola-free in August. A Ugandan government spokesperson said Thursday that Uganda currently has no Ebola cases and would make such information public if it did.
Nigerian health minister Muhammad Ali Pate said Nigeria's case remains contained. Contact-tracing efforts are continuing to prevent further spread. "We are trying to contain it so it doesn't go out to the communities," Pate said.
