Health authorities are investigating whether Ebola patients in Nigeria and Kenya were exposed to the virus at Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport on the same day, as efforts continue to establish the source of both infections.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the two patients passed through the airport on October 3, raising the possibility that they came into contact with shared facilities or equipment. However, no connection between the cases has been established.
Dr Wessam Mankoula, the agency’s head of emergency preparedness and response, described a possible interaction at the airport as “one of the possible scenarios” under investigation.
Nigeria is managing its first confirmed Ebola case in more than a decade, while Kenya has reported nine infections, including one death.
The Nigerian patient, a 42-year-old Ugandan-born woman living in Abuja, returned to the country on October 3 after spending about two and a half weeks in Uganda. She travelled through Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she had a two-hour stopover.
She developed symptoms four days after arriving in Abuja and visited two private health facilities before testing positive for Ebola on October 20. She is receiving treatment in isolation and is reportedly showing signs of improvement.
Her husband, a Swiss diplomat based in Nigeria who accompanied her on the trip, is also in isolation but has not developed symptoms.
The Kenyan patient, a man who travelled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Uganda before arriving in Nairobi on October 3, later died, becoming Kenya’s first recorded Ebola fatality.
Although both patients passed through Entebbe on the same day, investigators have yet to determine whether they met or shared facilities.
“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.
The World Health Organisation said the source of the Nigerian patient’s infection remained unknown, with investigators still reconstructing her travel and exposure history.
“The source of exposure is still not known. The travel history of the patient is still being pieced together,” said Dr Patrick Otim, a WHO emergency response official.
He said obtaining a complete account of the woman’s movements had been difficult because opportunities to interview her were limited while she remained in hospital.
Nigeria’s health authorities are also conducting genomic sequencing to determine whether the virus is related to other infections.
“The investigation is reconstructing the full travel and exposure history. Genomic sequencing is given a high priority,” said Dr Pavel Ursu, the WHO representative in Nigeria.
Ugandan officials had previously said the woman travelled to eastern DRC for business, where the current Ebola outbreak began. However, the WHO, Africa CDC and Nigeria’s health ministry said they had not received verified information confirming that she visited the country.
Uganda maintains that it has no confirmed active Ebola cases and says the woman’s transit through the country does not establish that she contracted the virus there.
Meanwhile, Africa CDC said Nigeria had identified additional people who might have been exposed to the patient, beyond the 44 contacts initially reported. Most were healthcare workers at facilities where she received treatment, alongside some family members.
Mankoula said Nigerian authorities were identifying people considered at high risk and placing them in quarantine, but declined to provide an updated contact figure before the government released its findings.
In Kenya, the first group of people quarantined after possible exposure is expected to return home on Sunday after completing 21 days of monitoring without developing symptoms.
Kenya’s Director-General of Health, Dr Patrick Amoth, said all nine confirmed infections were linked to the first patient, with no evidence of wider community transmission. The remaining eight patients were in isolation and responding well to treatment.
“We are not out of the woods,” Amoth warned, urging vigilance without panic.
The cases have heightened concerns about cross-border transmission, particularly between the DRC and Uganda, where people frequently travel for trade, work and family visits.
Otim said the long, porous border between the two countries made screening difficult, as people also used unofficial crossing points.
The WHO’s regional director for Africa, Dr Mohamed Janabi, called for “regional vigilance”, urging countries to strengthen surveillance, investigate infections and protect frontline health workers.
Ebola spreads through direct contact with the blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person, or contaminated objects. It does not spread through the air like influenza. Health authorities say rapid contact tracing, isolation and early treatment are essential to containing transmission.
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