Driver who transported victim among those who have fallen ill as suspected death toll hits 177
Ben Farmer
Africa Correspondent
Ben Farmer is Africa Correspondent for The Telegraph and its Global Health Security team and is based in South Africa. He has worked at The Telegraph for nearly 20 years, including five years in Kabul covering the Afghanistan war, five as Defence Correspondent in London, and four years in Islamabad.
Published
Uganda has confirmed three more Ebola cases as the burgeoning outbreak from neighbouring Congo continues to spread.
Health officials said the new cases brought the total detected in Uganda to five.
Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains the epicentre of the outbreak but the World Health Organization warned there was a high risk of the infection spreading to other east African countries.
A week after the outbreak was first confirmed, DRC authorities reported that the flare-up was already the third largest on record, with 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths.
Relief efforts are being hampered by insecurity in Ituri and the fact the outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain, rather than the Zaire strain, which caused 15 of the DRC’s previous 17 outbreaks. There are no approved vaccines for the variant, which can kill up to half of those it infects.
The three new Ugandan cases included a driver who had transported the first detected Ugandan case. Officials said he was receiving treatment. A female Ugandan health worker who treated the first detected case has also tested positive.
The third new case was a Congolese woman who was taken to hospital in Kampala after recently arriving from the DRC. She was treated in a private hospital, but later discharged.
Ugandan health officials said they had subsequently received a tip-off from the pilot who airlifted her, and they went back to test a sample, which was found to be positive.
Authorities in the DRC have banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people to try to contain the outbreak after medical workers faced resistance from angry residents.
The Ituri provincial government said funerals must be conducted in strict compliance with health protocols because bodies of victims remain highly contagious.
Earlier this week, a hospital in Rwampara was set on fire by youths angry they had been blocked from retrieving the body of a friend who was thought to have died of Ebola.
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