Uganda declares end to deadly Ebola outbreak that killed 55

Mubende, Uganda:

Uganda on Wednesday declared an end to an Ebola virus outbreak that emerged nearly four months ago and claimed 55 lives.

“We have successfully controlled the Ebola outbreak in Uganda,” Health Minister Jane Ruth Akeng said at a ceremony in the central district of Mubende, where the disease was first detected in September.

The move was confirmed in a statement issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), whose head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised the East African country’s “robust and comprehensive response” to the widely feared hemorrhagic fever.

Ms Ekeng said January 11 marked 113 days since the start of the epidemic, which also spread to the capital Kampala.

Under WHO criteria, a disease outbreak is officially over when there are no new cases for 42 consecutive days – twice the incubation period of the virus.

“Uganda made a rapid end to the Ebola outbreak by intensifying key control measures such as surveillance, contact tracing and infection, prevention and control,” the WHO statement quoted the minister as saying.

“While we expanded our efforts to mount a robust response in the nine affected districts, the magic bullet remained in our communities, who understood the importance of doing what was necessary to end the outbreak and took action.”

The two districts at the epicenter of the epidemic, Mubende and Kasanda, were placed under lockdown for two months until mid-December, but the government did not implement the same measures nationwide.

WHO said there are 142 confirmed cases in total, 55 confirmed deaths and 87 recovered patients, with children among the victims.

The Ugandan outbreak was caused by Sudan Ebola virus, one of six species of Ebola virus for which there is currently no definitive vaccine.

Three candidate vaccines – one developed by the University of Oxford and the Jenner Institute in the UK, another from the Sabin Vaccine Institute in the United States, and a third from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) – are being tested in Uganda.

‘Dark Shadows’ Arise

“Uganda has shown that Ebola can be defeated when the whole system works together, from having an alert system, to finding and caring for affected people and their contacts, to getting the full participation of affected communities in the response For,” Mr Tedros said in the WHO statement.

According to health officials, the last confirmed patient was discharged from the hospital on 30 November.

“Two months ago, it looked like Ebola would cast a dark shadow over the country in 2023 as outbreaks reached major cities such as Kampala and Jinja, but this victory opens the year with great hope for Africa, said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.

Ms Ekeng said it was the seventh outbreak of the disease in Uganda, and the fifth caused by the Sudan virus.

“Like many other outbreaks, the source of this outbreak is still not known,” he said at the ceremony.

Ebola is named after a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, where it was discovered in 1976.

The previous outbreak in Uganda, which shares a porous border with the DRC, was in 2019 when at least five people died.

Human transmission occurs through body fluids, with the main symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding, and diarrhea.

Containing outbreaks is difficult, especially in urban environments.

People who are infected are not contagious until symptoms appear, which occurs after an incubation period of between two and 21 days.

The deadliest epidemic occurred in West Africa between 2013 and 2016, killing more than 11,300 people.

There have been more than a dozen epidemics in the DRC, the deadliest claiming 2,280 lives in 2020.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)