Uganda officials have reported eleven new cases of Ebola in the Capital since Friday, signaling a worrisome increase in infections only a month after the outbreak was declared.
Nine more people tested positive in the Kampala metropolitan area on Sunday while two other cases were detected on Friday.
A top World Health Organization (WHO) official in Africa said last week that Uganda’s Ebola outbreak was “rapidly evolving” describing it as a challenging situation for health workers.
Ugandan health authorities have confirmed 75 cases of Ebola since September 20, including 28 deaths. There are currently 19 active cases.
The official numbers don’t include those who probably died of the disease before the outbreak was confirmed in a farming community about 150 kilometers West of Kampala.
Fears that the pandemic could spread beyond the outbreak epicenter compelled authorities to impose an ongoing lockdown, including night curfews, on two of five districts that reported outbreaks.
The measures were put in place after a man infected with Ebola died at a Kampala hospital while seeking treatment.
The nine new cases reported yesterday follow a similar pattern as they are all contacts of an Ebola-infected patient who travelled from an Ebola hotspot and sought treatment at Kampala’s top public hospital, Mulago.
There is no proven vaccine for the Sudan strain that is currently circulating in Uganda, which makes a daunting task effort towards stemming and controlling it’s spread.
Ugandan officials had by Thursday last week documented more than 1800 Ebola contacts,747 of whom had completed 21 days of monitoring for possible signs of the disease that manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever, according to the Africa Centers for disease control and prevention.[AP]
