GULU, Uganda Doctors in northern Uganda struggled on Monday to deal with an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus that has already killed at least 43 people.
Facilities at a government hospital at the center of the outbreak zone were stretched to breaking point on Monday, with one patient lying on the floor of the verandah outside a ward set aside for Ebola victims.
Although the ward at Gulu Hospital, around 270 km (180 miles) north of the capital Kampala, was supposed to be securely isolated, the building had no glass in its windows and waste and effluent from the room were not being kept separate from the rest of the facility.
Inside lay 16 Ebola patients in various stages of the disease.
They were being looked after by doctors clad in one-piece paper body suits, rubber gloves and face masks.
Mike Ryan, the WHO's disease outbreak coordinator, said in Geneva on Monday that 43 people out of 63 confirmed cases had died of the virus by Monday.
Toll to Rise But local health authorities expected the toll to rise as patients reached Gulu from more remote areas of the countryside and others developed symptoms.
Ebola, first recognized in what was then Zaire in 1996, is one of the most terrifying infections known to mankind. The WHO says it has killed in 793 of 1,100 known cases.
There is no vaccination and no cure. Doctors can try to treat the problems that the virus causes, but even with the best medical treatment in the world, the survival rate is less than three patients in 10.
Not only is it highly contagious, it is also super-fast and can kill within 48 hours. The cause of death is usually massive hemorrhaging the victim's blood literally pouring out of veins and arteries into their body and out through their eyes, ears and mouth.
One doctor described it as "watching someone dissolve before your eyes".
Uganda's neighbors have swiftly tried to stem the spread of the virus, although the WHO said it was not necessary for Uganda to impose travel restrictions to or from the area.
"Cordoning off an area does not work in situations like this," Ryan said. "Travel restrictions would be inappropriate because the disease is in a very remote part of Uganda and it spreads with direct contact with bodily fluids, not by sitting next to an ill person on a plane." Border Checks But Kenyan health authorities have sent a medical team to Busia, the main border crossing point between Uganda and Kenya, to try to identify and isolate suspected Ebola cases, while authorities in Rwanda and Tanzania have also stepped up checks.
Their task will be made all the more difficult by the fact that hundreds of people cross the border at Busia every day while suffering from other endemic illnesses such as malaria and AIDS-related diseases which show similar early symptoms.
The Ugandan government and the WHO have flown extra medical supplies to Gulu with an epidemiological surveillance team to improve barrier nursing, set up isolation wards and start an information campaign.
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.
Since 1976, Ebola 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.
(Reuter)