Ugandan authorities reported 11 more Ebola cases An alarming rise in infections since Friday in the capital, a month after an outbreak was declared in a remote area of the East African country.
Nine more people in the Kampala metropolitan area tested positive for Ebola on Sunday, and two more on Friday, Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng said on Monday.
and top world Health Organization The African official said last week that the Ebola outbreak in Uganda was “developing rapidly”, describing a challenging situation for healthcare workers.
Ugandan health officials have confirmed 75 cases of Ebola since September. 20. There are 19 active cases, including 28 deaths.
UGANDA, EBOLA EPIDEMIC SHOULD END BY THE END OF THE YEAR
Official figures do not include those who probably died from Ebola before the outbreak was confirmed in a farming community about 93 miles west of Kampala.
Fears that Ebola could spread far from the epicenter of the epidemic have forced authorities to impose an ongoing lockdown, including nighttime curfews, in two of the five districts that have reported Ebola cases. The measures were taken after an Ebola-infected man received treatment in Kampala and died in a hospital there.
The nine new cases reported on Monday follow a similar pattern, as they all had contacts of an Ebola-infected patient traveling from an Ebola hotspot and seeking treatment at Kampala’s top public hospital known as Mulago.
Doctors wearing protective equipment pray together in the isolation section of Entebbe Regional Referral Hospital in Entebbe, Uganda, before visiting a patient in contact with an Ebola victim in October. 20, 2022.
(AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
There is No proven vaccine For the Sudanese strain of Ebola circulating in Uganda.
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According to the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ugandan authorities have documented more than 1,800 Ebola contacts by Thursday, 747 of whom had completed 21 days of follow-up for possible signs of the disease, which manifested as viral hemorrhagic fever.
Contact monitoring is key to curbing the spread of infectious diseases like Ebola.
Ebola is spread through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated material. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain, and sometimes internal and external bleeding.
Scientists do not know the natural reservoir of Ebola, but they suspect that the first person infected in an epidemic contracted the virus through contact with an infected animal or by eating its raw meat. Ugandan authorities are still investigating the source of the current outbreak.
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Uganda has experienced multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one that killed more than 200 people in 2000. 2014-16 Ebola epidemic West Africa It killed more than 11,000 people, the disease’s biggest death toll.
Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, when it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease was named.
