First Ebola patients in Kenya and Nigeria may have crossed paths at Entebbe airport on 3 October

Health officials are investigating whether the first Ebola patients confirmed in Kenya and Nigeria interacted at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda on 3 October, the Associated Press (AP) reported on 22 October. Both are known to have passed through the airport that day. The link has not been confirmed.

Dr Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said: "One of the issues we are currently investigating has been some sort of interaction between the two cases at the airport."

Kenya has recorded nine cases, all linked to a traveller who returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through Uganda. Al Jazeera reported on 6 October that Kenya's first confirmed patient had travelled by road from the DRC to Kampala, Uganda's capital, before flying to Nairobi, where the patient died.

Nigeria announced its first case on 20 October. AP described the patient as the Uganda-born wife of a diplomat in Abuja; she spent two weeks in Uganda in September and arrived in Nigeria in early October. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said the strain was Bundibugyo, Nigeria's BusinessDay newspaper reported on 21 October.

Nigeria is tracing 44 contacts. Mankoula said more have since been identified but declined to give a new figure.

Ugandan authorities denied that the patient was exposed to Ebola in Uganda and said she had travelled to Congo. Health officials dispute this. Mankoula said there is so far no indication that she went to Congo.

The outbreak began in Congo in May and has spread to three other African countries. In Congo, the virus has infected more than 9,500 people and killed nearly half of them, across eight provinces and 66 health zones in the east. Africa CDC data show only 20 per cent of confirmed cases are among known contacts, and about 60 per cent of deaths occur in the community, outside treatment centres.