Nigeria’s first Ebola case matches DR Congo strain, health officials say

Nigerian health officials say test results have confirmed the country’s first case of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which is behind a major outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), marking the disease’s first spread to West Africa in the current outbreak.

The case involves a woman who travelled from Uganda to the capital, Abuja, on October 3, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said.

She was tested for Ebola on October 19 after health officials learned she had recently travelled to Uganda, one of the countries affected by the current outbreak. Officials confirmed the positive result on Tuesday.

“We did three levels of tests, but all molecular. The strain was Bundibugyo,” Olajumoke Babatunde, director of the public health laboratory service at the NCDC, said on Wednesday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also confirmed the strain, for which there is neither a vaccine nor a specific treatment.

‘Multi-organ failure’

An unnamed official told the AFP news agency that the woman is a diplomat whose condition has deteriorated into “multi-organ failure”.

Ayoade Alakija, a Nigerian physician who co-chairs a G7 committee for investment in global health, said that it had taken 12 days since the woman fell sick for her to be tested for Ebola, potentially exposing many other people to the infection.

Nigerian authorities have identified 44 contacts, most of them healthcare workers. They include the patient’s husband, a Swiss national, who lives with her in Abuja.

Officials are also tracing passengers who travelled with her from Uganda to Nigeria but do not believe she was symptomatic during the flight.

Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate told public broadcaster NTA that the woman was in isolation and receiving treatment.

Earlier cases

In 2014, the first Nigerian case, detected in Lagos, raised fears the virus would spread rapidly, but it was brought under control within three months, resulting in 20 infections and eight deaths.

That epidemic killed more than 11,000 people across West Africa between late 2013 and 2016.

The WHO says Nigeria is the fifth country to detect the virus in the outbreak, which this past week widened across the continent, with Kenya in the east reporting nine cases since October 6.

Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director-General Jean Kaseya said on X on Wednesday that the outbreak was “no longer one country’s fight”, and that he would hold a meeting of Africa’s health ministers next week to strengthen the cross-border response and review hospital capacity.

The DRC is the epicentre of the outbreak, its deadliest on record.

There have been more than 9,000 Ebola cases and more than 4,000 deaths there since mid-May.