Foreign Office officials are investigating reports that a British national has died in Macedonia of suspected Ebola.

If confirmed it would be the first death of a UK national from Ebola, although British nurse Will Pooley was cured of the virus last month.

The Macedonian government says it is investigating the death of a British national on its territory after an undiagnosed illness but stressed that the cause of death had not been confirmed.

“It is a British citizen who has died. The health ministry is trying to find out what he died from and it needs some time to find out the reason,” a spokesman for Macedonia’s foreign ministry said. “We are following the protocols of what to do in such cases set out by the World Health Organisation.”

The director of the commission for infectious disease at the ministry of health, Jovanka Kostovska, said the man, a 56-year-old, had travelled from London to Macedonia on 2 October with a colleague for business. He had been staying at a hotel in the centre of Skopje when he was taken ill with severe stomach ache and increased temperature. The man remained in his hotel room for three days, before an ambulance was called on Thursday afternoon around 3pm local time. He was taken to hospital where he died around 90 minutes later.

At this stage Ebola is only suspected, and further tests are to be carried out by a laboratory in Germany to find out if it is the virus or not. Results are expected within 48 hours.

Officials said the man’s colleague said that he had not travelled to any country where Ebola was a risk, although the Macedonian health ministry suspected he had visited Nigeria. They gave no reason why this was suspected.

Hotel staff and anyone who came into contact with the man have now been put in quarantine.

In London, the Foreign Office said it was aware of the report of the Briton’s unexplained death and was urgently looking into it.

Pooley, from Suffolk, became the first Briton to contract the virus after working as a volunteer nurse in Sierra Leone, which is one of the worst-hit countries of the current outbreak.

He was flown back to Britain on 24 August and recovered after being treated in an isolation unit at London’s Royal Free hospital.