A team of \u200bleading Ebola scientists will travel to Nigeria to help investigate how the country\u2019s first patient in more than \u200ca decade got infected, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said.<\/p>\n
Their task will involve trying to work out how the female patient, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja, caught the Bundibugyo species of Ebola. Her travel documents show she had not visited the outbreak epicentre in Democratic Republic \u200bof Congo, Kaseya said in an interview with Reuters in London.<\/p>\n
Finding out how she became ill matters to ensure \u200bthat the deadly Bundibugyo outbreak, already the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record, is not spreading silently \u2060in as-yet undiscovered locations, and to help trace and isolate all contacts.<\/p>\n
\u2018MANY UNKNOWNS\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe have so many unknowns,\u201d said Kaseya. \u201cI\u2019m bringing a \u200bgroup of scientists in Abuja because\u2026 we need to be led by science.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the theories the scientists will investigate is a \u200bpotential link between the patient in Nigeria and the first case in Kenya, reported earlier this month in a man who had travelled from Congo. On Friday, genomic sequencing showed that the viruses that infected the two patients were closely related.<\/p>\n The patient in Nigeria had been on holiday in Uganda and \u200btravelled through Entebbe Airport on October 3. The patient in Kenya, who has since died, was likely in the airport at \u200bthe same time, as their flights were around 40 minutes apart, although they did not depart from the same gate and it is not \u200cclear \u2060whether they had any contact, Kaseya said.<\/p>\n Kaseya said while genomic sequencing had shown that the viruses were similar, it did not mean that one of the patients had directly infected the other and the patient in Abuja, whose condition is improving, has said she does not remember meeting the Kenya patient.<\/p>\n However, he said they were not excluding any options, including that there may have been indirect \u200bcontact through another person, for \u200bexample. Ebola spreads through close \u2060contact with the infected bodily fluids of a person with symptoms, according to the World Health Organization.<\/p>\n INVESTIGATION ONGOING<\/strong><\/p>\n Kaseya said all countries involved were now willing to collaborate in the investigation, after what \u200bhe described as tension last week when Uganda\u2019s government insisted the patient in Abuja had been to \u200bCongo, while Nigerian \u2060authorities suggested she had not and was infected in Uganda, which has been Ebola-free since August.<\/p>\n Kaseya said the team, which will be led by the co-discoverer of Ebola, Congolese expert Jean-Jacques Muyembe, would also look at more sequencing data to work out where the Kenyan \u2060patient was \u200binfected.<\/p>\n The Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak in Congo has now caused almost 10,000 cases and \u200bmore than 4,600 deaths in Congo, and spread to three other countries in Africa \u2013 Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. The disease can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in severe \u200bcases, internal and external bleeding. There is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for Ebola Bundibugyo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A team of \u200bleading Ebola scientists will travel to Nigeria to help investigate how the country\u2019s first patient in more than \u200ca decade got infected, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said. Their task will involve trying to work out how the female patient, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja, caught the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,2854,27],"tags":[2909,75,175],"class_list":["post-22419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-health","category-west-africa","tag-africa-cdc","tag-ebola","tag-nigeria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22421,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419\/revisions\/22421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}