Ugandan health authorities on Friday said the country’s capital Kampala remains Ebola-free despite a 45-year-old man dying from the virus in the city a week ago, reported The BBC.
According to the Ugandan health ministry, 58 confirmed Ebola cases have been reported since the outbreak was first reported in the central district of Mubende on September 20.
Only one fatal case had been recorded in Kampala, a 45-year-old man who fled from Mubende district. The man’s wife also tested positive for Ebola shortly after giving birth at a health clinic in Kampala.
But despite the second case, Ugandan Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng stressed that Kampala was still considered Ebola-free because the woman, and her husband, were exposed to the virus in Mubende.
“I want to state very clearly that this does not mean Kampala has Ebola,” Aceng told reporters on Thursday. “Cases that were already listed in Mubende remain cases of Mubende. Unless Kampala generates its own cases that start within Kampala, we cannot call that a Kampala case.”
The Ugandan minister said health workers who attended the baby’s birth are under medical observation in an isolation facility at Kampala’s main hospital where they will remain for the next 21 days.
The highly contagious Ebola is spread through bodily fluids, with common symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhoea.
The last time Uganda recorded fatality from a previous Ebola outbreak was in 2019. The particular strain now circulating in Uganda is known as the Sudan Ebola virus, for which there is currently no vaccine.
President Yoweri Museveni’s office is expected to address the nation on the current Ebola situation on Saturday, for the second time this week.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said clinical trials could start within weeks on drugs to combat that strain. The UN health body is planning to try out two vaccines for the Ebola Sudan virus to try and curb the spread of the rare strain.
