Africa CDC probes possible link between Ebola cases in Nigeria, Kenya

A medical personnel in a kit used to illustrate the story

Health officials are investigating whether Nigeria’s latest Ebola case and a fatal infection in Kenya could be linked to possible contact at Uganda’s main international airport earlier this month, according to a report by BBC News.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said both patients travelled through Entebbe International Airport on 3 October, prompting investigations into whether they shared equipment or had other forms of contact.

Wessam Mankoula, the agency’s head of emergency preparedness and response, said the possibility was one of several scenarios under investigation, but stressed that no connection had been established between the infections.

The investigation comes as Nigeria responds to its first confirmed Ebola case in more than a decade, while Kenya has reported nine infections, including one death, in its current outbreak.

The Nigerian patient is a 42-year-old Ugandan-born woman living in Abuja. She is receiving treatment in isolation and has shown signs of improvement, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

The woman returned to Nigeria on 3 October after spending about two and a half weeks in Uganda. Her journey included a two-hour stopover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

She developed symptoms few days after arriving in Abuja and visited two private health facilities before testing positive for Ebola on 20 October.

Investigators are working to establish where she contracted the virus and whether her movements overlapped with those of the Kenyan patient, who travelled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) through Uganda before arriving in Nairobi on 3 October.

The Kenyan man later died, becoming the first recorded Ebola death in the country’s current outbreak.

Although both patients passed through Entebbe on the same day, officials have not confirmed whether they met, used the same facilities or had any other contact.

Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) is also conducting genomic sequencing to help determine whether the infection is related to other cases.

Ugandan health officials previously said the Nigerian patient had travelled to eastern DRC for business, where the current Ebola outbreak began.

However, the WHO, Africa CDC and Nigeria’s health ministry said they had not received verified information confirming that she visited the country.

Uganda has maintained that it has no confirmed active Ebola cases, adding that the woman’s passage through the country does not establish that she contracted the virus there.