Nigeria tracks 62 Ebola contacts after first case in Abuja

Nigeria no longer has an Ebola patient on its soil, but its health authorities have followed 62 people who were in contact with the country’s only confirmed case, a woman diagnosed in Abuja on October 20 after arriving from Uganda. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) expects that monitoring to end on November 13, and no contact has tested positive so far.

The case was first announced by Ali Pate, Nigeria’s coordinating minister of health and social welfare, who said the patient had recently flown in from Uganda, according to Xinhua. Nigeria thus became the fourth African country with a confirmed case in the current Bundibugyo outbreak, after the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya. The World Health Organization’s outbreak notice of October 23 adds that her symptoms began on October 7 and that she sought care in Abuja on October 11.

Evacuation to Geneva and a widening contact list

The patient, a 42-year-old Swiss national whose husband works at Switzerland’s embassy in Abuja, was flown home on a medical evacuation flight on October 26. Geneva University Hospitals admitted her to an isolation unit and described her condition as stable, while her husband, a close contact, was isolated at University Hospital Zurich, France 24 reported. After the transfer, Mohamed Janabi, the WHO regional director for Africa, said Nigeria currently had no Ebola cases.

The list of people under watch has grown since the first count of 44. NCDC officials said 53 contacts were being monitored on October 24, and its situation report of October 29 counted 62, none of them with symptoms. NCDC officials also said suspected cases in the Federal Capital Territory, Rivers State and Enugu tested negative in late October. On October 31, NCDC Director-General Jide Idris said two people isolated in Yola, Adamawa State, had also tested negative after two rounds of testing, in a statement on the Adamawa investigation. Premium Times reported the same day that no new case had been recorded in the country.

An outbreak spreading across more of the continent

When the Nigerian case was confirmed, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said that no earlier Ebola outbreak had touched so wide a geographic area, and that mortality in the DRC was approaching 50 percent. The African Union’s public health agency had already declared a public health emergency of continental security in May.

Africa CDC told AFP on November 2 that the outbreak had killed 5,376 people, nearly all of them in the DRC, where more than 10,000 cases have been recorded since May, Euronews reported. Uganda, which counted 20 cases and two deaths, was declared free of Ebola in August. Kenya has reported nine cases and two deaths, and released its first 20 quarantined contacts on October 26 after 21 days of monitoring, according to the WHO regional office for Africa. The Bundibugyo strain still has no approved vaccine or treatment.

When the case was confirmed, Kaseya appealed to the international community for money that could be released quickly and used flexibly, for more medical supplies and diagnostic tests, for trained responders and for surveillance rooted in local communities.

Xinhua images dated October 18 show an Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, a city Africa Times had already reported the virus reaching, in Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo Reaches Major City of Bunia. Kenya’s course is traced in our coverage of Kenya’s first imported Bundibugyo case, of Kenya’s third Ebola case and of a first patient who went undetected for six weeks, while the tracing effort is detailed in Africa Times reporting on Kenya’s contact tracing.

Photo: Simon Davis/DFID / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0