ABUJA - Pate wrote on X that he had approved the departure of Nigeria's first imported Ebola case of this outbreak. He described the 42-year-old patient as clinically much improved, with laboratory results moving back toward normal. That improvement, he added, does not mean she is no longer infectious. Nigerian television showed a Rega aircraft, and the Swiss air-rescue service confirmed the deployment to SRF. The foreign ministry in Bern said it would brief reporters on Monday afternoon. Asked earlier by Keystone-SDA, the Federal Office of Public Health had not yet confirmed the repatriation.
How the case reached Abuja
The patient is Ugandan-born and married to a Swiss embassy employee in Abuja. Nigeria's Centre for Disease Control says she returned from a holiday in Uganda on 3 October, flying through Addis Ababa. She became ill four days later, attended a private clinic on 10 October and was admitted to another on 11 October. Symptoms at presentation were fever, diarrhoea, body aches and a sore throat. Bleeding was not reported. The national public health institute was notified on 19 October, and the national reference laboratory confirmed Ebola on 20 October. It is Nigeria's first case in more than a decade, and so far the only one. Fifty-three contacts are being followed, among them health workers, domestic staff and her husband. A suspected case reported by Rivers State on 23 October tested negative.
The virus is the rarer Bundibugyo species. An outbreak announced in the Democratic Republic of Congo in mid-May has now been reported in four countries, the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent to date. Africa CDC director-general Jean Kaseya said a team of scientists will help Nigeria work out how this patient was infected. Her travel documents show she did not visit Congo, he said, matching what Bern said last week and contradicting some accounts from Uganda. One line of inquiry is a possible link to Kenya's first case, a man who had travelled from Congo and who also passed through Entebbe airport on 3 October.
Where Switzerland can treat her
Since 2019 Switzerland has kept two reference hospitals ready for diseases such as Ebola: the University Hospital of Zurich and Geneva University Hospitals. Officials had not named the receiving hospital by late morning. The World Health Organization's Africa director, Mohamed Janabi, credited Nigerian clinicians with carrying the patient through the acute phase so that evacuation was possible. For families watching from Switzerland, the flight closes the same kind of wait that ended last week when a Swiss hostage came home from Niger. It also lands in a health system already watching an early flu season and late vaccine deliveries.