Nigeria says Ebola patient is improving as Uganda disputes account of her trip
Nigeria’s health minister says the first patient identified in the current Ebola outbreak is improving. Officials disagree about her recent travel, and where she was infected remains unknown.
Nigeria’s first Ebola patient in the current outbreak is stable and improving in Abuja, Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate told the BBC on 21 October. Nigerian and Ugandan officials have given conflicting accounts of her travel before she became ill, complicating efforts to establish where she was infected.
Pate said the 42-year-old woman spent two and a half weeks in Kampala, Uganda, and made a two-hour stopover in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on her return to Nigeria. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told the BBC she arrived home in Abuja on 3 October.
Uganda’s health ministry gave a different account, according to the Associated Press: it said the woman only transited through Uganda and had been on a business trip to eastern Congo. The ministry said travel through Uganda did not establish that she was infected there. Pate told the BBC that Nigerian officials were working with Uganda, Ethiopia and the Africa CDC to establish her movements.
How Nigeria identified the Ebola case
Kaseya told the BBC that the woman first developed symptoms and sought medical help on 6 October, initially thinking she had malaria. The Associated Press reported a 7 October symptom onset. Both accounts say she was admitted to a private hospital on 11 October. Pate said public health authorities were alerted on 19 October after her condition failed to improve, and three laboratory tests confirmed Ebola the following day.
Malaria is endemic in Nigeria, and symptoms including fever, headache, muscle pain, vomiting and diarrhoea can resemble those of Ebola. Kaseya said the woman visited two private hospitals before the diagnosis. The difference between the reported onset dates remains relevant to efforts to trace her possible exposure and contacts.
Contact tracing and preparedness
Pate said authorities had identified 44 contacts and that none were known to have developed symptoms. They are in isolation, including a person who travelled with the patient. He said she had not travelled outside Abuja since arriving in Nigeria. His update on her condition and movements follows NewsJaws’ earlier report on the case confirmation and contact tracing.
The Associated Press reported that Nigeria’s disease-control agency had stepped up surveillance after Ebola was detected in Kenya, with measures covering early detection, isolation, laboratory diagnosis, infection prevention and protection of health workers. Nigeria established an Ebola task force in June after an outbreak began in Congo. Kaseya urged countries to share information to help determine the patient’s movements and possible exposure.
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Sources and context
- Nigeria's first Ebola patient holidayed in Uganda, officials sayBBC News
- Nigeria confirms Ebola case in its capital as woman who arrived from Uganda tests positiveAssociated Press (published by PBS NewsHour)
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.