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Ebola patient in Nigeria did not visit DR Congo, Swiss ministry says, contradicting Uganda
The Ebola patient in Nigeria - the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja - did not travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Switzerland's foreign ministry said on Friday, contradicting Uganda's earlier account and deepening uncertainty about where she was infected.
By Haut Monde Post
• October 23, 2026
• 3 Min Read
Conflicting accounts of the patient's movements
Switzerland's foreign ministry said on Friday that the patient in Nigeria - the country's first Ebola case in more than a decade - had never entered the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ministry believes the Ugandan-born woman contracted the virus while travelling in Uganda with her husband, a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja.
The statement directly contradicts Uganda, which had previously said the woman travelled to eastern DR Congo. A Ugandan government spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday that Uganda had no Ebola cases and would make any such information public. Uganda reported cases in May and June before the WHO declared it Ebola-free in August.
WHO and Africa CDC probe the infection source
The WHO said investigations were continuing to establish the likely source of infection for the Ebola patient in Nigeria. According to Dr Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Africa CDC is looking into whether the patient may have come into contact with an Ebola patient in Kenya, as both travelled from Uganda's Entebbe airport on 3 October.
Catherine Smallwood, a WHO Ebola incident manager in DR Congo, told a UN briefing in Geneva on Friday via video link that WHO staff in DR Congo had no information showing the patient in Nigeria had travelled to the country. On a possible Kenya link, she said officials would need to compare the timing with when the patient's symptoms began to tell whether infection occurred at the Ugandan airport or elsewhere.
Experts question the airport theory
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist and member of the WHO's Ebola emergency committee, cast doubt on the shared-airport explanation. She said:
"I think that is very speculative unless there is evidence of sharing the same space in a manner that could explain that."
Koopmans added that "random presence at the same location, a large airport, is not a supported epidemiological link by any standard of what we currently know."
Nigeria says the case is contained
Nigerian health minister Muhammad Ali Pate said the case remains contained and that contact-tracing was continuing. "We are trying to contain it so it doesn't go out to the communities," he said, adding that officials were working hard to ensure that does not happen.
The WHO said its investigations to establish the likely source of infection for the Ebola patient in Nigeria are ongoing.
