Africa

Nigeria confirms first Ebola case in Abuja

Woman arriving from Uganda tests positive as outbreak reaches West Africa, contact tracers chase 44 people while Congo's epidemic runs faster than the 2014 record

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Children play outside a health centre in eastern Congo. Nigeria said Tuesday it had recorded its first Ebola case of Africa’s latest outbreak, as Kenya declared its ninth case, prompting a regional health official to warn of ‘an extremely serious threat’. Photograph: Sebastien Kitsa Musayi/AP Children play outside a health centre in eastern Congo. Nigeria said Tuesday it had recorded its first Ebola case of Africa’s latest outbreak, as Kenya declared its ninth case, prompting a regional health official to warn of ‘an extremely serious threat’. Photograph: Sebastien Kitsa Musayi/AP theguardian.com
Health workers on the frontlines of the Ebola response receive vaccination in Beni, DRC. Photograph: Gradel Muyisa Mumbere/Reuters Health workers on the frontlines of the Ebola response receive vaccination in Beni, DRC. Photograph: Gradel Muyisa Mumbere/Reuters theguardian.com

Nigeria has confirmed its first Ebola case of Africa's current outbreak, after a woman who arrived from Uganda tested positive in Abuja. Health minister Muhammad Pate said authorities are tracing 44 people identified as contacts of the patient, who began showing symptoms on 7 October and was admitted to a hospital in the capital four days later.

The case moves the outbreak into Africa's most populous country, and into its western reaches for the first time. Kenya confirmed its first case earlier this month and has since recorded nine infections. The Africa Centers for Disease Control's director general, Jean Kaseya, said the continent is facing 'an extremely serious threat,' with a fatality rate approaching half of all cases. The Bundibugyo strain behind this outbreak has infected more than 9,500 people and killed more than 4,600 — already the most geographically extensive Ebola outbreak in history, spread across three African regions.

Uganda's health ministry moved quickly to distance itself from the Abuja case, saying the patient had only transited through the country and that Uganda has 'no confirmed active Ebola cases.' Uganda's ministry said the woman had been on a business trip to Congo's eastern region, where the outbreak began in mid-May. Nigerian authorities have not disclosed her nationality. The diplomatic scramble over where exposure occurred underscores what has become the defining problem of this outbreak: it travels faster than the paperwork.

Nigeria established an Ebola taskforce in June, and its disease control agency announced two weeks ago that it was stepping up surveillance after the Kenyan detections. The World Health Organization says the outbreak is the fastest-spreading on record and is on track to exceed the 2014-2016 West African epidemic, which killed 11,000 people — the deadliest known. That earlier epidemic was stopped in Nigeria after a handful of cases, through aggressive contact tracing in Lagos. This time the first case landed in Abuja with a 44-person contact list already attached.

The woman's route ran from Congo's east through Uganda to Nigeria's capital, and no one can yet say where the virus boarded.