KAMPALA A viral hemorrhagic fever which has killed more than 30 people in northern Uganda in the past two weeks has been confirmed as Ebola fever, Uganda's health minister said late on Saturday. Laboratory tests showed the outbreak in the northern district of Gulu was caused by the Ebola virus, minister Crispus Kiyonga said on Ugandan television. He said 57 cases had been reported so far, of whom 31 had died.
The government and the World Health Organization flew extra medical supplies to Gulu on Friday with an epidemiological surveillance team to improve barrier nursing, set up isolation wards and start an information campaign. Ten of the deaths occurred in an Italian-backed mission hospital, but the others were in villages around Gulu.
Local officials fear Ebola could have been responsible for more than the 31 deaths reported so far. Ebola fever is named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where it was first recognized in 1976 when an epidemic killed more than 270 people.
In the past three months, hundreds of Ugandan soldiers returning from war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have passed through Gulu, causing speculation in the local media that they may have brought the virus with them. But Army spokesman Phinehas Katirima said no soldiers had the virus. Since 1976, Ebola virus outbreaks have been reported from Gabon, Sudan and the Ivory Coast, with individual cases of infection reported in Britain, where a laboratory worker was infected by a contaminated needle in 1976, and in Liberia. The most recent reported outbreak was in 1996 in Gabon, when 60 people were infected.
About 75 percent of them died. Symptoms of Ebola fever include headache, muscle ache, abdominal pain, diarrhea and bleeding.
The exact origin of the Ebola virus remains unknown, medical sources said.
(Reuter)