A British medical doctor who contracted Ebola while treating patients in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been medically evacuated to the United Kingdom for specialist treatment, the UK government has confirmed.
The development was announced in a notice by the Department of Health and Social Care titled, “UK Citizen Returned from DRC for Specialist Ebola Care,” published on the British government’s website and sighted by newsmen on Thursday.
According to the notice, the doctor tested positive for Ebola and was flown to the UK through a joint evacuation arrangement involving the British and Congolese governments, with established infection prevention and control procedures observed throughout the operation.
The notice stated that the patient was receiving treatment at a high-level isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, which is specially equipped to manage highly infectious diseases and staffed by specialist medical teams.
The Deputy Director of All Hazards Public Health Response at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), Dr Renu Bindra, said the agency and the National Health Service had established infection prevention and control protocols to minimise the risk of further transmission.
She assured that the risk to the wider public remained low, adding that strict isolation measures were in place to prevent the patient from coming into contact with members of the public.
The government also disclosed that medical personnel attending to the doctor were provided with appropriate personal protective equipment and other safety measures to prevent infection.
According to report on Thursday that the Royal Free Hospital had previously treated adult patients with Lassa fever, Ebola and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever.
The report described the case as the first involving a British national in the ongoing outbreak, which has been identified as the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, although several Europeans from other countries have contracted the virus in recent months.
According to the UK Health Security Agency, only four cases of Ebola have been confirmed in the United Kingdom since 1976.
Three of the cases involved healthcare workers who responded to the West African Ebola outbreak between 2014 and 2015.
Meanwhile, Nigeria confirmed its first case of Ebola in the current outbreak on October 20, 2026, after laboratory tests detected the Bundibugyo strain in a woman who had travelled from Uganda.
The World Health Organisation reported that the patient developed symptoms on October 7, four days after arriving in Nigeria, and sought treatment at a private health facility in Abuja on October 11.
The confirmation made Nigeria the fifth country to detect the virus since the outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on May 15, 2026.
The index patient was subsequently evacuated to Switzerland on October 26 for further medical care, alongside her husband, who was identified as a close contact.
In a related development, two suspected Ebola cases detected in Yola, Adamawa State, were ruled out after two rounds of laboratory testing, reducing concerns about a possible spread of the infection to the North-East.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has also disclosed that the 62 contacts identified following the confirmation of the imported case are expected to complete their monitoring period by November 13, 2026.
The agency said contact tracing and monitoring remained ongoing, while additional contact tracers had been identified and trained to strengthen surveillance activities.
Earlier on November 4, the WHO approved the inclusion of two additional vaccine candidates in clinical trials targeting the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola.
The candidates, ChAdOx1 BDBV, developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with the Serum Institute of India, and Moderna’s mRNA-1469, were specifically developed to combat the strain responsible for the ongoing outbreak.
