Nigeria’s Ebola patient on medical evacuation flight to Switzerland, condition stable

ABUJA – Nigeria’s Ebola patient left the country on a medical evacuation flight to Switzerland on the morning of Oct 26, 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 the 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, he added.

The Swiss foreign ministry and Uganda’s health ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Scientists probing 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 earlier.

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.

Finding out how she became ill matters to ensure that the outbreak, already the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record, is not spreading silently in as-yet undiscovered locations, and to help trace and isolate all contacts.

‘Many unknowns’

“We have so many unknowns,” said Kaseya. “I’m bringing a group of scientists in Abuja because… we need to be led by science.”

One of the theories the scientists will investigate is a potential link between the patient in Nigeria and the first case in Kenya, reported earlier in October in a man who had travelled from Congo. On Oct 23, genomic sequencing showed that the viruses that infected the two patients were closely related.

The patient in Nigeria had been on holiday in Uganda and travelled through Entebbe Airport on Oct 3.

The patient in Kenya, who has since died, was likely in the airport at the same time, as their flights were around 40 minutes apart, although they did not depart from the same gate and it is not clear whether they had any contact, Kaseya said.

Kaseya said while genomic sequencing had shown that the viruses were similar, it did not mean that one of the patients had directly infected the other and the patient in Abuja, whose condition is improving, has said she does not remember meeting the Kenya patient.

However, he said they were not excluding any options, including that there may have been indirect contact through another person, for example.

Ebola spreads through close contact with the infected bodily fluids of a person with symptoms, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Investigation ongoing

Kaseya said all countries involved were now willing to collaborate in the investigation, after what he described as tension last week when Uganda’s government insisted the patient in Abuja had been to Congo, while the Nigerian authorities suggested she had not and was infected in Uganda, which has been Ebola-free since August.

Kaseya said the team, which will be led by the co-discoverer of Ebola, Congolese expert Jean-Jacques Muyembe, would also look at more sequencing data to work out where the Kenyan patient was infected.

The Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak in Congo has now caused almost 10,000 cases and more than 4,600 deaths in Congo, and spread to three other countries – Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. 

The disease can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in severe cases, internal and external bleeding.

There is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for Ebola Bundibugyo.

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 WHO 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. REUTERS