Kampala, Uganda (AP) – A nurse in Uganda died Ebola in the first death recorded from the country Last epidemic The disease ended at the beginning of 2023, a health official said on Thursday.
The 32 -year -old was an employee of Mulago hospital, the main reference establishment in the capital, Kampala journalists, Diana Atwine, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Health, Thursday.
After developing a fever, he was treated in several places in Uganda before several laboratory tests confirm that he suffered from Ebola. The man died on Wednesday and the Ebola Sudan strain was confirmed as a post-mortem tests, said Atwine.
At least 44 contacts of the victim have been identified, including 30 health workers and patients from Mulago hospital, according to the Ugandan Ministry of Health.
Health authorities are “in full control of the situation,” said Atwine, while also urging Ugandans to report any suspected case.
Tracking contacts are essential to stem the propagation of Ebola, and there are no approved vaccines for the Ebola Sudan strain.
The last epidemic of Uganda, discovered in September 2022, killed at least 55 people before it was declared in January 2023.
Confirmation of Ebola in Uganda is the last of a trend in epidemics of viral hemorrhagic fevers in the Eastern African region. Tanzania declared an epidemic of Ebola type Marburg disease at the beginning of the month, and in December Rwanda has announced that its own Marburg epidemic was finished. In progress Marburg epidemic in northern Tanzania The Kagera region has killed at least two people, according to local health authorities.
The Kampala epidemic could be difficult to respond, because the city has a very mobile population of around 4 million. The deceased nurse had asked for treatment in a hospital just outside Kampala and then went to Mbale, in the east of the country, where he was admitted to a public hospital. The health authorities said that the man also sought the services of a traditional healer.
Emmanuel Batiibwe, a doctor who helped direct Uganda’s efforts to stop the country’s epidemic in 2022, the Associated Press told a quick response in the tracing of all contacts possible from Ebola to Kampala and elsewhere.
“Our reaction should be rapid, decisive and well coordinated,” he said, speaking of lessons learned from the 2022 epidemic, of which the epicenter was a city in the center of Uganda. “We have the means to respond quickly now.”
Ebola, which spreads by contact with body fluids from an infected person or contaminated materials, manifests itself as a fatal hemorrhagic fever. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and sometimes internal and external bleeding.
Scientists do not know the natural reservoir of Ebola, but they suspect that the first infected person in an epidemic acquired the virus by contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat.
Ugandan officials still investigate the source of the current epidemic.
Uganda had several Ebola epidemics, including one in 2000 which killed hundreds. The Ebola 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the greatest number of deaths of the disease.
Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous epidemics in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola river, after which the disease is named.
