Ebola strikes Uganda
The Ministry of Health of Uganda has notified the World Health Organization of an outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Kibaale district in the western part of the country.
Samples tested both in Uganda and at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta have confirmed the diagnosis of Ebola.
Twenty cases, including 14 deaths, have been reported since the beginning of the month. Nine of the 14 deaths have been from a single household. The district has been isolated and a national task force coordinated by the Ministry of Health has been reactivated. The CDC was sending more staff to join CDC staff already on the ground in Uganda.
Officials stress that the quarantined area is not in any vicinity likely to be visited by tourists and that that the strain is not as strong as it had been in the past. The strain has been identified as Ebola Sudan, one of the more common forms of the virus. Patients have had fever and vomiting but not the characteristic bleeding from body orifices that mark the more severe form of the disease.
In its coverage of the outbreak, The New York Times reports that Ebola was recently highlighted as a potential biological weapon by US officials who see it as the ‘frontline’ of American security interest. The paper reports that the rise of Shabab, an Islamic insurgent group in the region has ‘refocused’ US attention on Uganda as a virtual ‘petri dish’ for biological weapons.
In 2007, an outbreak of the virus in Uganda killed more than 20 people.
The WHO says it is not currently calling for a travel advisory for Uganda.
Gretchen Kelly
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