The outbreak is serious because it comes from a Sudanese variety that kills 25 to 90% of those affected due to the lack of approved drugs and vaccines.
A person infected with the Ebola virus died earlier this month at the Kiruddu National Referral Hospital in Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The outbreak, which started on September 20 in Mubende, 80 kilometers west of the city, has reached the largest city in the country, with a metropolitan area of more than 3.6 million inhabitants.
Investigation services have identified 42 contacts of the deceased, a person from an affected area who traveled through the country, concealing his identity, to be assisted by a healer. The deterioration of his condition led to his admission to the medical center where the death occurred.
The dimensions of the issue have not been fully disclosed. “There are more than 70 cases spread across three or four districts and this means there is already community transmission,” said Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, director of Médecins Sans Frontières Emergency Services, who recently visited the former English colony. “There is an active search, but there are a hundred to check,” he claims, explaining that the NGO has set up two treatment centers with about 40 beds each. “We are in a difficult moment,” he confesses. “The only advantage is that Uganda has a relatively strong health system.”
The danger stems from both their arrival in densely populated areas and their absorption into human flows through Uganda, a country that serves as a gateway between the center of the continent and the ports of East Africa. It also hosts 1.5 million refugees, the majority from South Sudan. “We hope it doesn’t go to that country where suspicious cases have been found,” he says.
A 24-year-old man was the first to die from the epidemic, located in Mubende, which subsequently claimed the lives of six members of his family. At the start of the emergency, health authorities requested isolation of the affected area, but Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni objected, claiming it was not a disease with similar effects to Covid-19. The leader rejected any incarceration or closure of schools or churches, claiming the fight against Ebola was “very easy” and encouraging citizens to wash their hands as the main preventive measure.
The deceased in Kampala is the nineteenth and official statistics speak of 54 cases, of which twenty have recovered, including five doctors. The severity of the outbreak stems from the fact that it is not the Zaire tribe that has affected the Congo and the Gulf of Guinea, but rather the Sudanese variety, which kills between 25 and 90% of those affected because there is no approved drugs and vaccines, although several studies are underway. Infection occurs through patients’ bodily fluids and contaminated environments.
Source: La Verdad
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