World Health Organisation on Thursday said investigators had pursued all leads to assess the risk of Ebola spreading in Nigeria as the deadly outbreak reached an eighth province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Authorities in Abuja confirmed the first case of infection in an individual who arrived from Uganda, which borders the worst-hit provinces in DRC.

“The source of exposure is still not known, and the travel history of the patient is being pieced together now in terms of her movement from Uganda up to Nigeria,” Patrick Otim, from WHO’s Emergency Response programme, said in an online update. “This is rapidly evolving. As we get more information, we’ll try to determine where she was exposed. And then it’s at that point where we can say whether there is any transmission happening.”

Nigeria is the fifth country this year after DRC, France, Uganda, and Kenya to confirm the presence of Ebola disease caused by the Bundibugyo virus.

The original DRC outbreak was declared in mid-May, and it has led to more than 4,600 deaths and a total of 9,552 confirmed infections. Around six in 10 of these deaths have occurred outside health centres, indicating the continuing difficulty of halting community transmission.

The latest DRC province to confirm infections is Nord Ubangi, which borders the Central African Republic, where ongoing armed violence continues to uproot thousands of people, increasing the difficulty of halting transmission.

Kenyan authorities have reported a total of nine cases of infection, including one death earlier this month, of a Kenyan national who had been working in DRC before flying back to Nairobi via Entebbe, Uganda.

Uganda previously recorded two deaths and 20 confirmed cases of infection, before officially declaring the Ebola threat over at the end of August.

“Immediately after (the death of the Kenyan patient), we embarked on contact tracing,” Patrick Amoth, director-general of Kenya’s health ministry, said, adding that 135 contacts with the deceased patient have been traced “and we have been able to account for them, 100 per cent”.

According to Nigerian authorities, the patient developed symptoms on October 7 and sought care at a clinic before being hospitalised 48 hours later.

Genetic sequencing of the infection is underway to confirm that it is the same Ebola Bundibugyo disease circulating inside DRC.

More than 40 close contacts have been identified to date.

(NAN)