Uganda Declares First Ebola Death Since 2019
Source: (
https://bit.ly/3qVrsBT)
"The confirmed case is a 24 year old male... (who) presented with
EVD symptoms and later succumbed," the ministry said on Twitter,
using an abbreviation for Ebola virus disease.
In a statement released earlier on Tuesday, the World Health
Organization said a 24-year-old man in Mubende had tested positive
for "the relatively rare Sudan strain" of the virus.
"This follows an investigation by the National Rapid Response team
of six suspicious deaths that have occurred in the district this
month," WHO said.
Eight other suspected patients were undergoing treatment, WHO said.
"This is the first time in more than a decade that Uganda is recording
the Ebola Sudan strain," WHO Africa Director Matshidiso Moeti said.
"We are working closely with the national health authorities to
investigate the source of this outbreak while supporting the efforts
to quickly roll out effective control measures."
There have been seven previous outbreaks of the Sudan strain,
including four times in Uganda and thrice in Sudan, the WHO said.
Uganda -- which shares a porous border with the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC) -- has experienced several Ebola outbreaks in the
past, most recently in 2019, when at least five people died.
The DRC last month recorded a new case in its violence-wracked east,
less than six weeks after an epidemic in the country's northwest was
declared over.
At present there is no licensed medication to prevent or treat Ebola,
although a range of experimental drugs are in development and
thousands have been vaccinated in the DRC and some neighbouring
countries.
Uganda's Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng Ocero told AFP the
authorities had started vaccinating frontline workers, including
customs officials, at the border with DRC.
"As the investigations in the confirmed case are on, we have stepped
up surveillance and contact tracing of the confirmed case," Aceng
said, adding that they had deployed 12,000 doses of the Ebola
vaccine.
Ebola is an often fatal viral haemorrhagic fever. The death rate is
typically high, ranging up to 90 percent in some outbreaks,
according to the WHO.
First identified in 1976 in the DRC (then Zaire), the virus, whose
natural host is the bat, has since set off a series of epidemics in
Africa, killing around 15,000 people.
Human transmission is through body fluids, with the main symptoms
being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhoea.
Outbreaks are difficult to contain, especially in urban environments.
People who are infected do not become contagious until symptoms
appear, which is after an incubation period of between two and 21
days.
The worst epidemic in West Africa between 2013 and 2016 killed more
than 11,300 alone. The DRC has had more than a dozen epidemics, the
deadliest killing 2,280 people in 2020.
