Officials probe possible Ebola link between Nigeria and Kenya cases

Health officials are investigating whether Ebola patients in Nigeria and Kenya may have crossed paths at Uganda’s Entebbe airport on 3 October, or shared a source of infection. No link has been established, but the inquiry matters because it could help explain how the virus reached Nigeria, which is reporting its first case in more than a decade.

The Nigerian patient, a 42-year-old woman, is in isolation and showing signs of improvement; her husband is also isolated but has no symptoms. She tested positive on 20 October after travelling from Uganda via Addis Ababa, while the Kenyan man arrived in Nairobi from the Democratic Republic of Congo via Uganda and later died. Kenya has reported nine infections, including that death, and investigators are tracing contacts and sequencing the Nigerian patient’s virus; her full travel history remains unconfirmed.