ABUJA, Oct 26 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s Ebola patient left the country on a medical evacuation flight to Switzerland on Monday morning, the health minister said, adding that her clinical condition was much improved.
The patient, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja, is Nigeria’s first Ebola case in more than a decade.
The outbreak, which started in Democratic Republic of Congo, has now been reported in four countries in East, Central and West Africa, giving it the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent to date.
The possibility that the Nigerian patient became infected in Uganda, where officials say she spent a two-week holiday before returning to Abuja, has fuelled concerns about undetected transmission in a country where the outbreak had appeared to be under control.
Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate said in a post on X that the woman was “stable, conscious, communicating, and her clinical laboratory test results closing towards baseline” before her evacuation flight departed.
Her spouse has remained asymptomatic and left Nigeria on the same flight, Pate added.
The Swiss foreign ministry and Uganda’s health ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATING HOW PATIENT CAUGHT RARE STRAIN
A team of leading Ebola scientists will travel to Nigeria to help investigate how the patient caught the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya told Reuters in an interview.
Switzerland said last week that she had not travelled to Congo, contradicting statements from Ugandan officials.
Her travel documents show she had not visited Congo, Kaseya said.
There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo species, which has now caused almost 10,000 cases and more than 4,800 deaths in Congo, and spread to three other countries in Africa – Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda.
Kenya has reported nine cases and two deaths, all linked to a man who had travelled from Congo via Uganda’s Entebbe airport.
Uganda reported 20 cases in May and June but has not recorded any since and was declared free of the virus by the World Health Organization in August.
The WHO’s Africa director congratulated Nigeria’s government and health workers for stabilising the patient’s condition, allowing her to be evacuated.
“The Nigerian medical team successfully managed her through the acute phase of the illness and stabilized her condition,” Mohamed Janabi said on X.
(Reporting by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo, Ben Ezeamalu, Sodiq Adelakun, Nilutpal Timsina and Elias Biryabarema; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet, William Maclean)
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