By Sharon Tibenda

30^th July 2012:

An outbreak of the Ebola virus has killed 14 people in western Uganda this month, health ministry officials said, ending weeks of speculation about an unknown illness that had many people fleeing their homes.

Ugandan officials and a World Health Organisation representative told a news conference in Kampala on Saturday last week that there was “an outbreak of Ebola” in Uganda.

“Laboratory investigations done at the Uganda Virus Research Institute have confirmed that the strange disease reported in Kibaale district is indeed Ebola hemorrhagic fever,” the Ugandan government and WHO said in joint statement.

Officials urged Ugandans to be calm, saying a national emergency taskforce has been set up to contain the disease.  In recent weeks, residents of Kibaale had been troubled by what seemed like a mysterious illness.  Health officials spent weeks conducting laboratory tests that were at first inconclusive.

Joaquim Saweka, WHO’s representative in Uganda, said the origin of the outbreak had not yet been confirmed.  “…A team of experts from the government, WHO and CDC (US Centre for Disease Control) are in the field and following up on all suspected cases and those who got into contact with patients,” he said.

Officials told reporters in Kampala that of the 14 people who have died so far, twelve were from the same family.  A total of twenty people have now been confirmed to have Ebola, which causes haemorrhagic fever and internal bleeding.

A health worker who treated patients infected by the disease was also among the dead.  There is no treatment and no vaccine against Ebola, which is transmitted by close personal contact and, depending on the strain, kills up to 90 per cent of those who contract the virus.

Kibale is near the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the virus first emerged in 1976, taking its name from the Ebola River.  Ebola first broke out in Uganda in 2000, killing 224 people out of more than 400 infected in the northern district of Gulu.

The disease re-emerged in 2008 in a western district close to the border with the DRC, killing 40 people.  END.  Login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories mid-week for our updates

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