KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda is facing renewed scrutiny over Ebola after two separate chains of infection in Kenya and Nigeria involved people who had recently passed through the country, even as Ugandan health authorities maintain that there are no confirmed active Ebola cases.
The development has placed Uganda at the center of a growing regional public health concern, but available evidence does not show that either patient contracted Ebola in Uganda.
Uganda was officially declared Ebola free on July 28 after completing the required response period without evidence of continued transmission. The country recorded 20 confirmed cases during the outbreak, including 15 imported cases, with 18 recoveries and two deaths.
The latest concern follows the case of a 40 year old Kenyan businessman who became Kenya’s first confirmed Ebola patient in the current outbreak. He had been living and conducting business in the Democratic Republic of Congo before travelling through Uganda and later reaching Nairobi.
An Africa CDC reconstruction of his movements showed that he had developed symptoms in September and received treatment at several facilities in the DRC without being tested for Ebola. He later travelled through North Kivu, crossed into Uganda and continued by road to Kampala before flying from Entebbe to Nairobi on Oct. 3. He was diagnosed only after becoming seriously ill at a Nairobi hospital and died on Oct. 5.
Ugandan officials said his temperature was normal when he passed through health screening at Entebbe International Airport. That detail has raised questions about how much protection temperature checks alone can provide during an outbreak.
However, the Kenyan case should not automatically be described as an Ebola infection acquired in Uganda. The man’s illness had already begun weeks before he entered Uganda, and investigations have not established precisely where he contracted the virus.
The concern has now taken another turn after Nigeria confirmed its first Ebola case in more than a decade.
The patient, identified by Nigerian authorities as a Nigerian woman who had travelled to eastern DRC for business, passed through Uganda in early October. Uganda’s Ministry of Health said she showed no symptoms while in the country and developed symptoms only after reaching Nigeria. Nigerian authorities have identified 44 contacts and begun monitoring them.
Uganda’s Director General of Health Services, Prof. Charles Olaro, has stressed that travelling through Uganda does not establish that the infection occurred in the country. He said the location where the woman was exposed to the virus remains under investigation, while Uganda is seeking more detailed information about her movements and medical history.
That distinction matters.
Uganda sits on one of the busiest movement corridors in East and Central Africa. People regularly travel between eastern DRC, Uganda and Kenya for business, trade, family reasons and medical care. In an outbreak involving a virus with an incubation period that can stretch for weeks, simply identifying where a person travelled does not necessarily identify where infection occurred.
But the Kenyan case has exposed a real weakness that Uganda cannot ignore: a person carrying Ebola can pass through a border while showing no obvious signs of illness.
The BBC investigation into the Kenyan case found that the businessman passed through several health facilities in the DRC and later underwent airport screening in Uganda and Kenya before his infection was identified. The episode has prompted wider questions about reliance on temperature checks and travellers’ declarations.
Uganda’s experience also shows why the country’s earlier Ebola response matters.
During the 2026 outbreak, health authorities identified the source of Uganda’s infections as people who crossed from the DRC. Uganda then used isolation, contact tracing and monitoring to stop further transmission. By the time the country was declared Ebola free, all identified contacts had completed the required follow up without developing the disease.
The challenge now is different.
The outbreak in the DRC has continued to grow, while cases have appeared in countries connected by regional travel. Kenya has reported nine cases, while Nigeria’s new case has expanded the geographical reach of the outbreak to West Africa. Africa CDC has called an extraordinary meeting of African health ministers for Oct. 28 to strengthen the continental response.
For Uganda, this is less about defending its image and more about maintaining the systems that helped bring its own outbreak under control.
Uganda’s long and porous border with the DRC remains difficult to monitor completely. Ugandan authorities have also acknowledged the need to strengthen screening at points of entry, with additional thermal scanners being provided to support surveillance.
There is also a lesson for the public.
A traveller who has passed through Uganda and later tests positive for Ebola does not mean Uganda is the source of the infection. At the same time, Uganda cannot afford to treat such movements as insignificant simply because a traveller had no fever at the time of screening.
The strongest protection is early reporting, rapid testing, contact tracing and cooperation between health authorities across borders.
For now, Uganda’s official position remains clear: there are no confirmed active Ebola cases in the country. But with the DRC outbreak continuing and regional travel connecting affected countries, Kampala will need to remain alert.
Uganda has already shown that it can stop Ebola. The new test is whether it can keep doing so while the virus continues moving through a region where borders are busy, populations are mobile and a normal temperature does not always tell the whole story.
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