6 more patients suspected to have Ebola have been took to the hospital days after investigators affirmed an outbreak of the extremely infectious disease in a distant corner of western Uganda, a health official told on Monday.
Stephen Byaruhanga, health secretary of the affected Kibaale district, told potential cases of Ebola, at first centered in a single village, are now being reported in more villages.
“It is no more just one settlement. There are a lot of villages affected,” Byaruhanga told.
In a national address Monday, Uganda’s president advised against unneeded contact among people, telling suspected cases of Ebola ought to be reported right away to health officials.
Officials from Uganda’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization declared on Saturday that the deadly Ebola virus killed fourteen Ugandans this month, ceasing weeks of speculation about the cause of a strange illness that had some people fleeing their homes in the absence of authentic answers.
If the 6 new cases are confirmed as Ebola, it would bring to twenty-six the number of Ugandans infected with Ebola.
This is the 4th happening of Ebola in Uganda since 2000, when the disease killed 224 people and left 100s more shocked in northern Uganda. At least 42 people were killed in another eruption in 2007, and there was a lone Ebola case in 2011.
Investigators took nearly a month to affirm Ebola’s presence in Uganda this year. In Kibaale, a district with 600,000 residents, some villagers began to abandon their homes to break away what they believed was an illness stimulated by bad luck. One family lost 9 members, and a clinical officer and her 4-month-old baby died from Ebola, Byaruhanga stated.
D.K. Lwamafa, of Uganda’s Ministry of Health, told reporters on Saturday that one Ebola patient from Kibaale had been referred to the national hospital in the capital but had then died in Kibaale.
