The Swiss government has disputed Uganda’s account of a Nigerian woman’s travel history as health officials investigate where she contracted the virus
The woman diagnosed with Nigeria’s first Ebola case in more than a decade did not travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), the Swiss government has said. The statement contradicts claims by Ugandan authorities that she had visited the country where the current outbreak began.
The patient is a 42-year-old Ugandan-born Swiss national married to a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja. She is believed to have contracted the virus while traveling with her husband in Uganda, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs told Reuters on Thursday.
Uganda’s Health Ministry initially reported that the woman was a Nigerian national who had visited eastern DR Congo on business before traveling through Uganda. The ministry said the source of her infection remained unknown and stressed that Uganda had no active Ebola cases. However, the Swiss government later denied that the woman had traveled to DR Congo, while the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said they had received no confirmed information about such a visit.
“The information supplied to WHO did not include travel to another country (other than Uganda),” WHO representative in Nigeria Pavel Ursu said.
The Africa CDC is also investigating whether the woman may have come into contact with a Kenyan Ebola patient, as both traveled through Uganda’s Entebbe airport on October 3.
Nigeria confirmed the infection on October 20. The woman returned to Nigeria on October 3 after spending about two and a half weeks in Uganda, the BBC said. According to the WHO, she developed symptoms four days later and sought medical care on October 11. She remains in isolation and is showing signs of improvement, while her husband is also isolated but has no symptoms. Nigerian Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate warned from “any panic,” stressing there was “no evidence that it has gone into the communities,” as authorities stepped up contact tracing and monitoring.
Uganda recorded 20 Ebola cases earlier this year, mostly imported from DR Congo, before being declared free of the disease in August.
The outbreak has affected DR Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and France. According to the latest figures from DR Congo’s Health Ministry, the country had recorded 9,704 confirmed Ebola cases and 4,687 deaths as of October 20, with a fatality rate of 48.3%. The outbreak has affected 66 health zones across eight provinces.
