Nigeria evacuates its only confirmed Ebola patient to Switzerland
- Nigeria evacuated its only confirmed Ebola case from Abuja to Switzerland; patient holds Swiss citizenship.
- The 42-year-old woman, wife of a Swiss embassy worker, had travelled in Uganda before returning to Nigeria.
- Health minister said she is much improved and stable, but warned she could still be infectious.
- Authorities identified 53 contacts; WHO warned of a complex Bundibugyo outbreak with no vaccine, over 4,600 deaths in DRC.
The only confirmed case in Nigeria of Africa’s latest deadly Ebola outbreak was evacuated Monday by air from Abuja, the capital, to Switzerland, where she has citizenship.
The patient, the 42-year-old wife of a Swiss embassy staff worker based in Abuja, had been travelling in Uganda with her husband before returning to Nigeria.
Her condition was “much improved, stable, conscious, communicating, and her clinical laboratory test results closing towards baseline”, said Nigerian health minister Muhammad Ali Pate in a statement.
“This does not mean she is not still infectious,” he added.
Fifty-three of the patient’s contacts have been identified by the Nigerian health authorities.
The World Health Organization has warned that Africa is facing a “complex” Ebola outbreak, with the virus now present in the west, east and centre of the continent.
The outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is no vaccine or specific treatment, has been ravaging the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has recorded more than 4,600 deaths since May.
Health authorities in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, successfully stemmed a previous Ebola outbreak a dozen years ago.
But some experts are worried about how much the illness could have spread in the time between the woman’s arrival on October 3 and her diagnosis, announced October 20.
