Uganda confirmed 11 cases of Ebola, including four deaths. At the same time, officials from the country’s Ministry of Health reported that seven other deaths are being investigated as suspected cases, due to their relationship with the outbreak in Mubende, about 130 km west of the capital, Kampala.
A few days ago, a deceased 24-year-old man became the first known case of Ebola in the country since 2019, for which the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared an outbreak. The agency’s African office later confirmed that the case was attributable to a “relatively exceptional strain from Sudan,” which was last present in Uganda in 2012.
The 2019 outbreak in Uganda had been due to Ebola Zaire (the most typical form) and this virus had been imported from the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was facing a large epidemic in its northeastern region.
On the other hand, the man who died a few days ago contracted the Sudanese strain of the virus. He had developed a high fever, diarrhea, abdominal pain and was vomiting blood and had originally been treated for malaria, until his illness was confirmed.
According to the WHO, the Sudanese Ebola strain is less transmissible and has shown a lower mortality rate in previous outbreaks than Zaire Ebola, a strain that killed nearly 2,300 people in the 2018 to 2020 epidemic in the Democratic Republic. of the Congo.
