The World Health Organization described the Ebola situation unfolding across the continent as "complex" on Thursday, after a case was confirmed in Nigeria — the first time the virus had reached west Africa having spread from the eastern part of the continent.
A confirmed case of Ebola's Bundibugyo strain — the variant behind an active outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — was reported in Nigeria on Tuesday, with health authorities indicating the infection originated abroad. The case arose in the spouse of a diplomat whose journey from Uganda had brought her to Abuja, the Nigerian capital.
According to Pavel Ursu, the WHO's representative in Nigeria, a patient who had spent time in Uganda from 16 September touched down in Abuja on 3 October. Details of her journey — boarding an Ethiopian Airlines service and passing through Addis Ababa en route — were laid out before an NCDC emergency gathering that convened on Wednesday.
According to Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya, who spoke to AFP on Thursday, the woman was born in Uganda but has established her primary residence in Abuja. He also stated that she had not travelled to the DRC, contradicting an earlier claim from Ugandan officials, who have disputed any connection between new cases and their country following its Ebola-free declaration earlier this year.
Pate told reporters on Thursday that contact-tracing efforts had been under way from the moment the woman entered the country earlier in the month, and that an unspecified number of people assessed as posing elevated transmission risk were being held in a dedicated quarantine facility. Pate also told reporters gathered in Abuja that transmission had not yet moved beyond the initial cases into surrounding communities, adding that efforts were centred on mapping contacts and establishing the precise whereabouts of each person exposed.
Health authorities reported that investigators are working to reconstruct her movements in the days before she fell ill, with one avenue of inquiry centring on whether she and Kenya's first recorded case — a person who also departed Uganda on 3 October — may have crossed paths at the airport.
Four countries across the continent now have confirmed cases of the outbreak, one of them being Nigeria, whose population is larger than that of any other African nation. Nine cases have been logged in Kenya since 6 October.
Public health records show that fatalities tied to the outbreak — one tracing its origins to the DRC — have surpassed 4,000 across more than 9,000 confirmed infections tallied from mid-May onward, a cumulative death burden that stands without precedent in the country's documented history of the disease. The outbreak involves the Bundibugyo strain, for which no approved vaccine or targeted treatment yet exists, and Mohamed Janabi, WHO's regional director for Africa, told an online media briefing that the response environment had grown more layered in its demands.
During the regional outbreak that swept through West Africa from late 2013 to 2016, claiming more than 11,000 lives across multiple countries, Nigeria recorded 19 confirmed cases and seven fatalities — a toll officials attributed to early containment of the imported case.
