Ebola outbreak in Uganda: 17 confirmed dead, says Kampala

The new Ebola outbreak in central Uganda has claimed 17 lives in three weeks, the health ministry in Kampala said on Monday.

On October 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 29 deaths in the country from Ebola since the start of the epidemic, but this figure includes deaths among people who have been confirmed that they were affected by the virus, but also among the suspected cases.

The Ugandan government is only counting deaths among confirmed patients, i.e. 48 people as of October 9, according to the ministry.

Read alsoThe incredible tenacity of the Ebola virus

Ebola virus disease is often fatal, but vaccines and treatments now exist against this hemorrhagic fever, which is transmitted to humans by infected animals.

The Ugandan authorities' previous report, published on October 5, put the number of dead at 10.

The first cases were recorded in the district of Mubende, in the center of the country, before the epidemic, confirmed by the authorities on September 20, spread to the neighboring districts of Kassanda, Kyegegwa and Kagadi.

“Relatively rare” strain

According to the WHO, the first identified death from this epidemic (and the first person to die from the disease in Uganda since 2019) succumbed to a "

" strain of the Ebola virus, said to be Sudanese, which had no longer been reported in this Great Lakes country since 2012. President Yoweri Museveni ruled out any containment at the end of September, saying that the country had the capacity to contain the epidemic.

Uganda has previously experienced outbreaks of Ebola, a disease that has claimed thousands of lives across Africa since its discovery in 1976 in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Human transmission is through bodily fluids, and the main symptoms are fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhoea.

Infected people do not become contagious until symptoms appear, with the incubation period ranging from 2 to 21 days.

The disease has six different strains, three of which (Bundibugyo, Sudan, Zaire) have already caused major epidemics.