Nigeria and Kenya investigate possible Ebola link

Health officials are looking into whether the recent Ebola case in Nigeria and a death in Kenya could be connected. They think this might have happened due to contact at Uganda’s main airport earlier this month, according to a BBC News report.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) shared that both patients passed through Entebbe International Airport on 3 October. This has led to questions about whether they shared equipment or came into contact in any way.

Wessam Mankoula, who leads emergency preparedness and response at the agency, mentioned that this possibility is one of several being explored. He also made it clear that no link has been confirmed between the two cases yet.

This investigation comes as Nigeria deals with its first confirmed Ebola case in over ten years. Meanwhile, Kenya has reported nine infections, including one death, during its current outbreak.

The Nigerian patient is a 42-year-old woman from Uganda who lives in Abuja. She is receiving treatment in isolation and has shown signs of getting better, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The woman returned to Nigeria on 3 October after spending around two and a half weeks in Uganda. Her trip included a two-hour stop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

She started showing symptoms a few days after reaching Abuja and visited two private health facilities before testing positive for Ebola on 20 October.

Investigators are trying to find out where she got the virus and if her travel plans overlapped with those of the Kenyan patient. The Kenyan man traveled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) through Uganda and arrived in Nairobi on 3 October.

Sadly, the Kenyan man passed away, becoming the first reported Ebola death in the current outbreak in that country.

Although both patients were at Entebbe on the same day, officials have not confirmed if they met, used the same facilities, or had any other contact.

Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) is also doing genomic sequencing. This will help them find out if the infection is related to other cases.

Ugandan health officials had earlier said that the Nigerian patient traveled to eastern DRC for business, where the ongoing Ebola outbreak started.

However, the WHO, Africa CDC, and Nigeria’s health ministry stated they have not received confirmed information that she visited the DRC.

Uganda has also said that it has no active Ebola cases right now. They added that the woman’s travel through Uganda doesn’t prove that she got the virus there.