Kenya Red Cross personnel during a simulation of the evacuation of stays of an Ebola sufferer in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on October 22, 2026. Kenyan authorities detected a ninth case of Ebola in the nation, the well being ministry said Tuesday.

TONY KARUMBA/AFP via Getty Images

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TONY KARUMBA/AFP via Getty Images

JOHANNESBURG – The first Ebola affected person confirmed in Nigeria may have crossed paths with the first Kenyan Ebola affected person at a Ugandan airport, well being officers said Thursday.

Nigeria announced its first case of Ebola in more than a decade on Tuesday. Nigerian well being authorities said the affected person is the Ugandan-born spouse of a diplomat primarily based in Abuja who had vacationed in Uganda in September and returned to Nigeria earlier this month.

She is being handled and 44 individuals she had shut contact with have been quarantined, Dr. Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, informed a press briefing on Thursday.

Authorities are now investigating what the supply of her publicity was.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is the fourth on the continent to file an Ebola case during the present outbreak, but it’s the first in West Africa and the furthest away from the epicenter in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Congo’s present Ebola outbreak started in May in the nation’s east. It has become the quickest spreading on file. At least 4,600 individuals have died and about 9,700 have been contaminated in Congo.

Neighboring Uganda initially recorded about 20 instances but was declared Ebola-free in August.

The first case in Kenya was recorded in early October and since then eight other instances have been confirmed in the east African nation.

The first Kenyan affected person, who has since died, travelled from Congo to Kenya, via Uganda.

Officials are now investigating whether that particular person crossed paths with the Nigeria case at the Entebbe International Airport in Uganda – as they were there on the same day.

Dr. Mankoula said the middle was probing whether there had been “some sort of interaction between the two cases at the airport.”

Ebola is unfold through direct contact with an contaminated particular person’s bodily fluids or contaminated objects. It causes extreme fever and can be lethal. However, typically individuals are not thought of infectious until they begin exhibiting signs.