Nigeria ’s Ebola patient holidayed in Uganda, says Africa CDC

Nigeria’s confirmed Ebola patient spent two and a half weeks on holiday in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, before returning to Abuja, according to Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

Kaseya, while providing update on the patient’s mediacl history, explained that the 42-year-old woman, originally from Uganda but living in Abuja, developed symptoms three days after arriving in the Nigerian capital on 3 October.

According to Kaseya, the woman , who is a wife of a diplomat developed symptoms on October 6 and initially sought treatment at a private hospital, believing she had malaria.

“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”, Kaseya told BBC.

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Muhammad Pate, Nigeria’s health minister, also confirmed that she had spent two and a half weeks in Kampala and made a two-hour stopover in Ethiopia’s capital on her journey home.

The minister added that the patient had not travelled outside Abuja since arriving in Nigeria.

“She’s stable, she’s improving,” Pate told the BBC.

Pate explained that none of 44 who had been in contact with her had developed any symptoms.

“Not all of them have been in close proximity. We cast the net wide so that we contain it as broadly as possible,” he said.

However, accounts of the woman’s travel history have differed between Nigerian and Ugandan authorities.

Earlier, Uganda’s Ministry of Health described the patient as a Nigerian national who had travelled to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for business and merely transited through Uganda.

The Ugandan ministry also maintained that there were no confirmed active Ebola cases in the country, stressing that the woman’s passage through Uganda did not establish that she had contracted the virus there.

The differing accounts have raised questions about the patient’s movements before her diagnosis and where she may have been exposed to the virus.

Pate, however said Nigerian officials were working with their counterparts in Uganda and Ethiopia, alongside the Africa CDC, to establish the full circumstances surrounding the case.

He sought to ease concerns over relations between the countries, emphasising the need for cooperation in responding to the outbreak.
“We respect our sister nation of Uganda. We have very strong solidarity, we are all in it together”, he said.

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Kaseya also called on African countries to share information promptly to help investigators reconstruct the patient’s movements and determine the likely source of infection.

He further urged Western countries against imposing travel restrictions in response to the outbreak, arguing that international cooperation and solidarity would be more effective in containing the disease.