Fidelia Soriwei, Abuja
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned of an increasingly complex Ebola outbreak across Africa after Nigeria confirmed an imported case of the Bundibugyo strain, marking the first reported case in West Africa linked to the current outbreak.
The case, announced by Nigerian authorities on Tuesday, involves a Ugandan woman based in Abuja who has a history of travel to Uganda. The development has raised concerns about the potential spread of the virus beyond East and Central Africa.
“We are facing a more complex outbreak landscape. Nigeria has confirmed an imported case of Ebola virus disease,” WHO Regional Director for Africa, Mohamed Janabi, said during an online media briefing on Thursday.
According to WHO representative in Nigeria, Pavel Ursu, the patient returned to Abuja on October 3 after staying in Uganda since September 16. She travelled on an Ethiopian Airlines flight through Addis Ababa, according to information presented at an emergency meeting of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) on Wednesday.
Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director-General Jean Kaseya told AFP that the woman was originally from Uganda but lived in Abuja. He also clarified that she had not travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), contrary to earlier suggestions by Ugandan authorities.
The case makes Nigeria the fourth African country affected by the outbreak, which began in the DRC and has spread across parts of the continent. Kenya, in East Africa, has reported nine cases since October 6.
The outbreak in the DRC has become the deadliest Ebola outbreak in the country’s history, with health authorities recording more than 9,000 confirmed cases and over 4,000 deaths since mid-May. The Bundibugyo strain responsible for the outbreak currently has no approved vaccine or specific treatment.
Kaseya has described the outbreak as an “extremely serious threat”, with the fatality rate in the DRC approaching 50 per cent. The WHO has warned that the spread of the virus into additional countries presents a growing challenge for public health authorities.
The Nigerian case has also revived memories of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people across the region between late 2013 and 2016. Nigeria successfully contained the virus during that outbreak, recording 19 infections and seven deaths.
Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people or contaminated materials. The disease can cause severe illness, including internal and external bleeding and organ failure, and has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past five decades.
Uganda, meanwhile, was declared Ebola-free by the WHO in August after recording 20 cases in an earlier outbreak, most of them involving people who had travelled from the DRC. The Ugandan government has rejected suggestions that the patient’s stay in the country was sufficient grounds to associate Uganda with Nigeria’s current case.
“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 the patient, who is receiving treatment at a private hospital, was showing “positive signs”. However, an NCDC official had said a day earlier that she had experienced multiple organ failure, underscoring the seriousness of her condition.
