The World Health Organisation warned on Thursday that Africa faced a “complex” Ebola outbreak after the virus crossed from East Africa to Nigeria, which has reported the first case in the west of the continent.
Nigeria on Tuesday announced an imported case of the Bundibugyo strain behind a major DR Congo Ebola outbreak, in a woman, the wife of a diplomat who had a history of travel to Uganda.
The continent’s most populous nation is the fourth African country affected by the outbreak, which this week came to span the continent, with Kenya in the east reporting nine cases since October 6.
The outbreak began in the Democratic Republic of Congo and has become the deadliest in the country’s history, killing more than 4,000 people out of more than 9,000 confirmed cases since mid-May, according to health authorities.
It is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is still neither a vaccine nor a specific treatment.
“We are facing a more complex outbreak landscape. Nigeria has confirmed an imported case of Ebola virus disease,” Mohamed Janabi, regional director for WHO in Africa, told an online media briefing.
The patient in Nigeria returned to the capital, Abuja, on October 3 after being in Uganda since September 16, the WHO representative in Nigeria, Pavel Ursu, said.
She flew to Abuja on an Ethiopian Airlines flight and transited through Addis Ababa, an emergency meeting of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) heard on Wednesday.
The woman is originally from Uganda but based in Abuja, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director General Jean Kaseya told AFP on Thursday.
He also said she did not go to the DRC, as suggested earlier by Ugandan authorities.
– ‘Extremely serious threat’ –
Africa CDC’s Kaseya has already warned of “an extremely serious threat”, with fatality rates fast edging towards 50 per cent in the DRC.
The Nigerian case has reignited memories of a widespread outbreak in 2014 that struck several countries in the region and killed more than 11,000 people across West Africa between late 2013 and 2016.
Nigeria successfully contained the Ebola outbreak in 2014, resulting in only 19 infections and seven deaths, raising confidence it can respond effectively to new public health threats.
Ebola, which is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids and can cause severe internal and external bleeding and organ failure, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the last 50 years.
In August, Uganda was declared officially Ebola-free by the WHO after recording 20 cases — almost all of them in people who had travelled from the DRC.
Uganda has pushed back against suggestions the patient in Nigeria might have contracted the virus in the country.
“It’s preposterous to suggest that just because someone was holidaying in Uganda, which by the way has no cases of Ebola, is reason enough to drag us into a conversation about Ebola in Nigeria,” Ugandan government spokesman Alan Kasujja told AFP.
“We’re trying as much as possible to make sure that Uganda is not branded as an Ebola country,” he added.
The WHO representative in Nigeria said patient zero, who is receiving treatment at a private hospital, was showing “positive signs”.
An NCDC official said a day earlier that she had experienced multiple organ failure.
AFP