Nigeria’s first confirmed Ebola patient is the wife of a diplomat who travelled to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, for a holiday, the Director-General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Jean Kaseya, has said.
Mr Kaseya said the woman, originally from Uganda but resident in Abuja, developed symptoms three days after returning to Nigeria on 3 October.
Providing details of the patient’s medical history, Mr Kaseya said the woman first developed symptoms on 6 October and initially sought treatment at a private hospital, believing she had malaria.
She subsequently visited another private hospital, where she was admitted on 11 October after her condition failed to improve.
“She went to the first hospital, a private hospital, thinking that she had malaria, and then she went to the second private hospital. She was admitted on the 11th,” Mr Kaseya told the BBC’s Newshour programme.
On Tuesday, the federal government confirmed a case of Ebola Virus Disease in the FCT, involving a woman who recently arrived in Nigeria on an international flight from Uganda.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Muhammad Ali Pate, who disclosed this, said the patient was admitted to a private hospital in the FCT, where she received treatment for several days before the diagnosis was confirmed.
He added that the woman has been isolated and is currently receiving medical care, while public health authorities have activated emergency response measures to contain the virus, noting that 44 close contacts have been identified.
“Not all of them have been in close proximity. We cast the net wide so that we contain it as broadly as possible,” Mr Pate told the BBC.
The minister explained that none of the identified contacts, including the person who travelled with the patient, had developed symptoms.
He added that the woman had remained in Abuja since returning to Nigeria.
Mr Pate said public health authorities were alerted on Monday, 19 October, after the patient’s condition failed to improve.
Her Ebola diagnosis was confirmed the following day after three laboratory tests.
Ebola has an incubation period of two to 21 days, meaning an infected person may not develop symptoms until several days or weeks after exposure.
Ebola spreads through direct contact with the blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person, or with contaminated materials. Symptoms can include fever, headache, severe weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea.
The latest information from Nigerian authorities and the Africa CDC differs from an earlier account provided by Uganda’s Ministry of Health.
Ugandan authorities had described the patient as a Nigerian national who travelled to eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for business and only passed through Uganda while returning home.
The Ugandan government maintained that the country had no active confirmed Ebola cases and that the woman’s transit through Uganda did not establish that she contracted the virus there.
However, Mr Pate said Nigerian authorities were working with Uganda, Ethiopia and the Africa CDC to establish the patient’s complete travel history and determine where she might have contracted the infection.
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“We respect our sister nation of Uganda,” he said. “We have very strong solidarity; we are all in it together.”
Mr Kaseya also called for greater information-sharing among African countries to support investigations into the patient’s movements and possible exposure.
He urged Western countries to avoid imposing travel restrictions, stressing that international collaboration and solidarity were essential to containing the outbreak.
Nigeria recorded an Ebola outbreak in 2014 after an infected traveller from Liberia arrived in Lagos. The World Health Organisation (WHO) later declared Nigeria free of Ebola transmission on 20 October 2014, after 42 days without a new case.
WHO records show that the 2014 response involved rapid case detection, isolation and extensive contact tracing, with 19 confirmed cases, one probable case and eight deaths.
The latest case in Abuja comes amid an ongoing Ebola outbreak in the DRC, where the disease has spread across several provinces.
