Ugandan health ministry on Sunday said a confirmed Ebola case had been reported from the country’s eastern city of Jinja, reported The Reuters.
In a tweet, Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng said the virus was detected in the body of a 45-year-old man who died on Thursday. A sample that turned positive for Ebola was obtained by health workers from a private clinic where the victim had sought treatment. Prior to this, cases due to the current Ebola outbreak had been confined to central Uganda.
“Contact tracing and epidemiological investigations have been activated,” the Ugandan health minister said.
Authorities have been struggling to contain the highly infectious and deadly haemorrhagic fever since the epidemic was declared. The government also shortened the school term by two weeks to reduce daily contact among students and help curb the spread of the Ebola outbreak.
Uganda first declared an outbreak September 20. The country has so far recorded a total of 135 confirmed cases and 53 deaths, according to the health ministry.
The virus circulating in Uganda is the Sudan strain of Ebola, for which there is no proven vaccine, unlike the more common Zaire strain that spread during recent outbreaks in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. As per reports, 100,000 doses of the IAVI and Merck vaccine are in the process of being released to Uganda for clinical trials.
Ebola generally kills about half of the people it infects.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) published an emergency appeal, calling for $88.2 million to curb Uganda’s Ebola outbreak and prevent the virus from spreading to other districts in the country as well as neighbouring countries.
The aid figure breaks down to $68 million on efforts to reduce mortality and morbidity associated with Uganda’s outbreak and $20.2 million to prevent spread in neighboring countries, according to the WHO.
