Nigeria evacuates Ebola patient to Switzerland

ABUJA, Nigeria (AFP)—The only confirmed case in Nigeria of Africa's latest deadly Ebola outbreak was evacuated Monday by air from Abuja, the capital, to Switzerland, where she has citizenship. The patient, the 42-year-old wife of a Swiss embassy staff worker based in Abuja, had been travelling in Uganda with her husband before returning to Nigeria. Her condition was "much improved, stable, conscious, communicating, and her clinical laboratory test results closing towards baseline", said Nigerian health minister Muhammad Ali Pate in a statement. "This does not mean she is not still infectious," he added. Fifty-three of the patient's contacts have been identified by the Nigerian health authorities. The patient's husband has also been evacuated to Switzerland, World Health Organization chief for Africa Mohamed Janabi said. "With the evacuation of the patient and her husband, Nigeria currently has no Ebola cases," Janabi wrote on X, adding the patient was now "clinically stable" after Nigeria "successfully managed her through the acute phase of the illness". Nigerian authorities last week said the patient's condition had at one point deteriorated into "multi-organ failure". Janabi last week warned that Africa was facing a "complex" Ebola outbreak, with the virus now present in the west, east and centre of the continent. The outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is no vaccine or specific treatment, has been ravaging the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has recorded more than 4,600 deaths since May. Health authorities in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, successfully stemmed a previous Ebola outbreak a dozen years ago. But some experts are worried about how much the illness could have spread in the time between the woman's arrival on October 3 and her diagnosis, announced October 20.