44 placed in quarantine after Nigeria logs first Ebola case since 2014

Nigerian health authorities placed 44 close contacts in quarantine on Thursday after confirming the country's first Ebola case in more than a decade. The patient is the Ugandan-born wife of a diplomat stationed in Abuja.

The woman had traveled to Uganda for a vacation in September and returned to Nigeria in early October. Dr. Wessam Mankoula, the director of emergency preparedness and response at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stated that she is currently receiving treatment. Officials are working to determine the source of her initial exposure.

The Africa CDC is specifically investigating a potential link to the first confirmed Ebola case in Kenya. That patient, who has died, traveled from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Kenya via Uganda. Both the Nigerian patient and the Kenyan patient were present at Entebbe International Airport on the same day. Mankoula said investigators are looking for "some sort of interaction between the two cases at the airport."

Nigeria is the fourth country on the continent to record an Ebola case in the current outbreak. It is the first country in West Africa to report a case and is located the farthest from the outbreak's epicenter in eastern Congo. The outbreak began in May and is the fastest spreading on record.

At least 4,600 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with roughly 9,700 infections reported. Uganda, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo, initially reported about 20 cases but was declared free of the virus in August. Kenya recorded its first case in early October and has since confirmed eight additional cases.

Ebola transmits through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or through contaminated items. The disease causes severe fever and can be fatal, but individuals are generally not considered infectious until symptoms appear.