One person has died and eight others infected in an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, the African country’s health ministry has confirmed.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned of “serious public health impact” after Ugandan authorities declared the country’s eighth Ebola outbreak on January 30.
A 32-year-old male nurse has been confirmed as the first casualty of the new outbreak of the highly infectious disease’s Sudan strain. He worked at the Mulago National Referral Hospital – a top medical centre in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.
His wife is also reported to have been infected, with nine total cases confirmed by authorities on February 11.
While outbreaks of the virus are still considered rare, the most recent cases were also identified in Uganda in 2022, where the Sudan strain claimed 77 lives after infecting 164 people. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is racing to develop a vaccine for the variation, which has a fatality rate of between 40% and 100%.
A vaccine for the Zaire Ebola strain, the deadliest of the four variations that impact humans, was approved in 2022 after a West African epidemic claimed over 11,000 lives between 2013 and 2016.
However, the Sudan strain is both less deadly and less transmissable than the Zaire virus, and health officials have assured locals that the current situation is “under control”, with Uganda remaining “safe and without travel restrictions”.
“As of today, a total of nine cases have been reported. Unfortunately, the first case, known as the index case, succumbed to the disease,” Charles Olaro, the Ministry for Health’s acting director general said in a statement on Monday, January 10.
“The remaining eight confirmed cases are currently receiving medical care and are stable,” he added.
“Of these, seven patients are being treated at Mulago National Referral Hospital, while one patient is at Mbale Regional Referral Hospital [in Eastern Uganda].”
The Ugandan government has launched a vaccination campaign involving 5,000 doses administered in clinical trials to tackle the new strain, Andalucian Informacion reports.
The WHO also reported last week that 2,160 doses of a vaccine candidate had been stockpiled in Kampala as part of an outbreak preparation plan.
Ebola, which was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976, is spread by direct contact with the blood or other bodily fluids of infected animals and humans.
Symptoms appear between two and 21 days after infection and include a fever, headache, muscle and joint pain and a sore throat.
