Health officials are investigating whether Ebola patients in Nigeria and Kenya may have crossed paths at Uganda's main airport earlier this month. Both travelled through Entebbe airport on 3 October, and investigators are examining whether they could have been exposed through shared equipment or other contact, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Thursday. Dr Wessam Mankoula, the agency's head of emergency preparedness and response, said this was "one of the possible scenarios", but stressed that no link had been established.
Nigeria is battling its first Ebola case in more than a decade, while Kenya has confirmed nine infections, including one death. The Nigerian patient, a 42-year-old Ugandan-born woman who lives in Abuja, is receiving treatment in isolation and is showing signs of improvement, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). She is married to a Swiss diplomat based in Nigeria, Switzerland's foreign ministry confirmed to news agency.
Her husband, who accompanied her on a trip to Uganda, is also in isolation but has not developed symptoms. The woman returned to Nigeria on 3 October after spending about two and a half weeks in Uganda, travelling through Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, where she had a two-hour stopover. She developed symptoms four days after arriving in Abuja and sought treatment at two private health facilities before testing positive for Ebola on 20 October.
Health officials are now trying to establish where she contracted the virus and whether her movements overlapped with those of the Kenyan patient. Is Ebola under control in Kenya after nine cases confirmed? What is Ebola and why is stopping the latest outbreak so difficult?
The Kenyan man had travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo through Uganda before arriving in Nairobi on 3 October. He later died, becoming Kenya's first recorded Ebola death in the current outbreak. Although both patients passed through Entebbe airport on the same day, health officials have not established whether they met, used the same facilities or had any other contact.
"One of the issues we are currently investigating has been some sort of interaction between the two cases at the airport," Mankoula told journalists on Thursday. Investigators are also examining whether the two infections could have a common source. The WHO said it was too early to determine where the Nigerian woman became infected.
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