Madar (Abuja) - Nigerian authorities on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, confirmed the country's first Ebola case in a woman who travelled from Uganda to the capital Abuja, making Nigeria the first West African country to report a case linked to the current outbreak, the BBC reported.
Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate said the diagnosis had been confirmed by laboratory tests and that the patient was in isolation receiving care in an Abuja hospital. Authorities have begun tracing 44 close contacts. According to the health ministry, the woman developed symptoms on October 7 and was admitted to a private hospital on October 11 before being diagnosed, Al Jazeera reported.
On the same day, Kenya reported its ninth case, a young relative of the first patient who was already in quarantine, saying all nine cases belonged to a single cluster.
The outbreak, which began in the Democratic Republic of Congo in May, has killed at least 4,600 people out of more than 9,500 cases, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. It is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment. Nigeria contained a previous outbreak in 2014.
