Africa CDC is dispatching a team of leading Ebola scientists to Nigeria to establish how the country’s first Ebola patient in over a decade contracted the virus, its Director-General Jean Kaseya has said.
The patient is the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja. She is infected with the Bundibugyo species of Ebola.
Her travel documents show she had not visited the outbreak epicentre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kaseya told Reuters in an interview in London.
Establishing the source of her infection is important to rule out the silent spread of the Bundibugyo outbreak, already the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record, in places not yet identified. It would also help authorities trace and isolate all her contacts.
“We have so many unknowns,” Kaseya said. “I’m bringing a group of scientists in Abuja because… we need to be led by science.”
One theory the team will examine is a possible link between the Nigerian patient and the first case in Kenya, reported earlier this month in a man who had travelled from Congo.
Genomic sequencing on Friday showed the viruses that infected the two patients were closely related.
The woman in Nigeria had been on holiday in Uganda and passed through Entebbe Airport on October 3.
The Kenyan patient, who has since died, was probably in the airport at the same time, as their flights were about 40 minutes apart.
They did not leave from the same gate, and it is unclear whether they had any contact, Kaseya said.
He cautioned that similar viruses do not mean one patient directly infected the other. The woman in Abuja, whose condition is improving, has said she does not recall meeting the Kenyan patient.
Even so, Kaseya said no possibility was being ruled out, including indirect contact through a third person.
The World Health Organization says Ebola spreads through close contact with the infected bodily fluids of a person showing symptoms.
Kaseya said all the countries involved were now ready to cooperate in the investigation.
He described tension last week, when Uganda’s government insisted the Abuja patient had been to Congo, while Nigerian authorities suggested she had not and was infected in Uganda, which has been Ebola-free since August.
The team will be led by Congolese expert Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a co-discoverer of Ebola. It will also review further sequencing data to determine where the Kenyan patient was infected.
The Bundibugyo outbreak in Congo has now caused almost 10,000 cases and more than 4,600 deaths there and has spread to three other African 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. (Reuters)
