The Incident Manager, for the National Ebola Disease Response, and the assistant director of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Odianosen Ehiakhamen, has explained how a patient’s travel history to Uganda raised suspicion, leading to the detection of Nigeria’s first confirmed Ebola case.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, announced Nigeria’s first confirmed case of Ebola virus disease in Abuja on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, involving a woman who travelled by air from Uganda.
He disclosed the laboratory confirmation on Tuesday evening, describing the case as imported rather than community transmission. The patient reportedly developed symptoms on October 7 and was admitted to a private hospital on October 11 before laboratory tests confirmed the infection.
Following the announcement, health authorities isolated the patient, identified 44 close contacts for active monitoring and strengthened surveillance at airports and borders amid the regional outbreak involving the Bundibugyo strain.
Speaking with ARISE News on Tuesday, Dr Ehiakhamen explained that the patient’s failure to respond to treatment for malaria-like symptoms prompted further investigation, during which her travel history to Uganda raised suspicion of Ebola.
“Before this index case, she had presented—the honorable minister has just highlighted—presented on the 11th to a private health facility and was managed for malaria-like symptoms. And just until yesterday 4:00 p.m., they reached out to our event-based system and called, and that was how we were able to link up with our colleague from the FCT, and then immediately moved to the center to ensure that the sample was collected.
“And for them, why they became a bit suspicious was because the patient wasn’t getting better, and then decided to take, you know, in-depth history and realized that there was a linkage, there was a travel history to Uganda. And that was when they made that call yesterday about a few hours after 4:00, and by by 9:00 p.m., the sample was already on its way to the lab.”
Describing Ebola as a high-consequence infectious disease, Ehiakhamen said Nigeria had heightened its preparedness following a risk assessment in May, with health facilities evaluated and surveillance, response capacity, infection prevention and control, workforce readiness and training reviewed, while experienced responders from the 2014 outbreak, the National Field Epidemiology Training Programme and World Health Organisation-supported training initiatives were being leveraged to strengthen the country’s response.
“Ebola disease is a high-consequence infectious disease. So, when there’s an outbreak anywhere in the world, countries are put on high alert. In fact, I talked about risk assessment that we had conducted in May. It tended towards moderate risk, but to have heightened preparedness, we had to go for a high risk. And of course, that initiated an alert for us.
“Health facilities were assessed. We had assessed about eight key high zones. However, the preparedness division had actually carried out assessments of major domains for surveillance, response, capacity for response, workforce, IPC, medical countermeasures availability, trainings, recent trainings.
“And of course, because Nigeria had experienced this same situation in 2014, it was important for us to identify colleagues who responded and were still in the country, because they are actually going to be our focal persons. We have FETP, the National Field Epidemiology Training Program, that we have, you know, rich workforce. And the WHO also has been able to conduct surge training workshops. And so we have a huge workforce to be able to respond, you know, around the country.”
Speaking on the 44 contacts identified, Ehiakhamen said they were mainly healthcare workers and support staff at the private hospital where the patient was treated, adding that the NCDC was strengthening rapid detection by monitoring response times, sample collection and testing procedures across its network of PCR laboratories.
“So, for the 44 contacts, they’re majorly healthcare workers and support staff in the hospital. Because everything has happened within the hospital. So, for us, this is not our first scare.
“We hope that we’re able to replicate this everywhere in all the PCR labs that have been identified that are actually in our network. We’re already using those labs, especially for Lassa, diphtheria, or other outbreaks.”
Addressing contact tracing efforts, Dr Ehiakhamen said health authorities were working with the Port Health Services to identify passengers who travelled with the patient, but discrepancies between the name on the case investigation form and the flight manifest had delayed verification.
He added that the patient’s spouse was among the identified contacts, while none of the 44 contacts had developed symptoms at the time of the interview.
“Just this evening, we’re able to get information from our colleagues from the Port Health Service. The office in charge of the international airport here has tried to provide some information. However, what we found was, the name that was provided in the case investigation form doesn’t match with any of the names on the manifest. So, we have, of course, people are called by different names, right? And so, he just made a request that we would need the international passport of that passenger so that we’re able to match from when they travelled.
“Of course, people don’t memorize numbers of the flight, but the spouse was able to provide that number.
“And of course, the spouse is a contact, and has been in contact with the case. None of the identified contacts has shown symptoms. Just none, they haven’t so far.”
Clarifying the patient’s nationality, Ehiakhamen said she was a Ugandan national married to a Swiss man and had travelled briefly to Uganda before returning to Nigeria on October 5.
“No, she’s not Nigerian. She’s a foreigner, but married to a Swiss, but she is originally from Uganda. And so, made a quick travel to Uganda and was back to the country on the 5th.”
Favour Odima
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