By Clement Bonnerot and Anait Miridzhanian
DAKAR, Oct 22 (Reuters) – The World Health Organization said on Thursday that information provided about Nigeria’s Ebola patient did not include travel to Congo, after Ugandan authorities said the woman had also visited the neighbouring country before she was diagnosed.
Nigerian health authorities have said the country’s first Ebola case in more than a decade involved a Ugandan woman who had recently returned from Uganda.
Uganda’s health ministry said the woman had also travelled to Congo, where the outbreak was first declared in mid-May and has since become into the fastest-spreading on record.
“The information supplied to WHO did not include travel to another country (other than Uganda),” WHO representative Pavel Ursu told an online press conference.
“The facts which we have received is that the patient returned to Abuja on October 3 being away from September 16 in Uganda,” he added.
Ursu said the focus in Nigeria was now on containing the viral infection and that the patient remained hospitalised, with her biochemical markers improving.
Jean Kaseya, director of Africa’s top public health agency, told Reuters on Wednesday that the patient, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat, arrived in Abuja after a two-week holiday in Uganda.
Patrick Otim, a WHO emergency response manager, said on Thursday the source of her infection was still unknown as health authorities were working to piece together her travel history.
One issue that is under investigation is which health facilities the woman visited in Abuja after the onset of her symptoms and before her hospitalisation 48 hours later, Otim said.
KENYA TRACES ALL CONTACTS OF FIRST CASE
Separately, a senior Kenyan health official said authorities there had now traced all 135 contacts of the country’s first Ebola case, which was confirmed on October 6 and after which a further eight cases have been reported.
“We have been able to account for them 100%,” health ministry director-general Patrick Amoth said. He said the last contact to be traced was a citizen of Uganda who had arrived in Kenya by air but exited by road, which meant it took more time to find him.
Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, whether living or dead. The disease can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in severe cases, internal and external bleeding.
The rare Ebola species behind the current outbreak kills about half of those infected and has no approved treatment or vaccine.
So far the outbreak is confirmed to have killed about 4,700 people across the four African countries that have reported cases, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
(Reporting by Clement Bonnerot and Anait Miridzhanian;Writing by Alexander Winning;Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Ros Russell)
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