Uganda’s health ministry on Friday reported three more Ebola patients have died in the country Uganda, bringing the total death toll to four. This comes just days after authorities confirmed an outbreak, reported The Africa News.
“In the last 24 hours, three new deaths have been recorded,” the health ministry said in a statement.
So far, Uganda’s health ministry has confirmed a total of 11 Ebola cases, including four deaths. The current outbreak, attributed to the Ebola Sudan strain, appears to have begun in a small village in Mubende district around the beginning of September.
The first casualty was a 24-year-old man who died earlier this week. Seven other deaths are being investigated for being linked to the outbreak in Mubende, around 130 km west of the capital Kampala.
On Thursday, Dr Henry Kyobe, the Ebola Incident Commander, said the Uganda’s health authorities have listed 43 contacts of the victims and contact tracing is going on.
The strain detected is a relatively rare strain, called the Sudan strain, which doesn’t have an approved vaccine that can prevent its spread. It’s been a decade since this strain was reported globally.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the Ebola Sudan strain, linked to Uganda’s current Ebola outbreak, is less transmissible and has shown a lower fatality rate in previous outbreaks than Ebola Zaire, a strain that killed nearly 2,300 people in the 2018-2020 epidemic in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A number of African countries have been out on high alert, strengthening screening and surveillance after the announcement of the outbreak in Uganda.
Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed more than 200 people. Last month, authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said a new case of Ebola in the eastern city of Beni was linked to a previous outbreak.
