Uganda's health ministry has rejected suggestions that the country is in the grip of a fresh Ebola outbreak, after Nigeria confirmed an imported case of the virus in a woman who had recently traveled through East Africa, according to a report by Guardian Nigeria. Nigeria's Coordinating Minister of Health said the patient developed symptoms on October 7, shortly after returning to Abuja, and that the case has been identified as the Bundibugyo strain of the virus.
Ugandan officials acknowledged the woman passed through the country but argued that transit alone does not establish where she actually picked up the infection, saying her full travel itinerary and clinical history still need to be reviewed before the source of exposure can be pinned down. Uganda had declared an earlier 2026 Ebola outbreak over after meeting the conditions required to confirm transmission had stopped, and officials maintain the country currently has no confirmed active infections of its own.
The case adds Nigeria to a small list of countries, including Kenya, that have reported imported Ebola cases this year linked to travel through Uganda, even as Kampala insists those importation reports do not amount to evidence of ongoing local transmission. Health authorities in the region are now focused on tracing the woman's full route before she developed symptoms, in an effort to establish exactly where and how she was exposed.