Ugandan officials said 11 others Ebola cases In the capital since Friday, an alarming increase in infections came just one month after an outbreak was declared in a remote part of the East African country.
Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng said on Monday that nine more people in the Kampala metropolitan area had tested positive for Ebola on Sunday, plus two more people on Friday.
summit World Health Organization An official in Africa said last week that the Ebola outbreak in Uganda was “evolving rapidly,” describing the difficult situation for health workers.
Ugandan health authorities have confirmed 75 cases of Ebola since September 20, including 28 deaths. There are 19 active cases.
Uganda claims the EBOLA outbreak must end by the end of the year
Official figures do not include those who likely died of Ebola before the outbreak was confirmed in a farming community 93 miles west of Kampala.
Fears of Ebola spreading far from the epicenter of the outbreak have forced authorities to impose ongoing lockdowns, including a nightly curfew, in two of the five counties reporting Ebola cases. The measures were taken after a man with Ebola sought treatment in Kampala and died in a hospital there.
The nine new cases reported on Monday follow a similar pattern, as they all had contact with an Ebola patient who had traveled from an Ebola hotspot and sought treatment at Kampala’s top public hospital, known as Mulago.
Doctors wearing protective equipment pray together before visiting a patient who has been in contact with an Ebola victim, at the isolation ward of Entebbe Regional Referral Hospital in Entebbe, Uganda, on October 20, 2022.
(AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
there There is no proven vaccine Sudan strain of Ebola spread in Uganda.
Latest Ebola outbreak in Uganda kills first health worker
By Thursday, Ugandan officials had documented more than 1,800 people infected with Ebola, of whom 747 had completed 21 days of monitoring for possible signs of the disease manifested as viral hemorrhagic fever, according to the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Contact tracing is key to stopping the spread of infectious diseases such as Ebola.
The Ebola virus is spread by contact with an infected person’s body fluids or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle aches, and sometimes internal and external bleeding.
Scientists do not know the natural reservoir of Ebola, but they suspect that the first person infected with Ebola contracted the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat. Ugandan officials are still investigating the source of the current outbreak.
Uganda has experienced several Ebola outbreaks, including an outbreak of the Ebola virus in 2000 that killed more than 200 people. 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa It killed more than 11,000 people, the largest number of deaths from the disease.
Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, occurring in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease was named.
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