Ebola cases in Uganda rise to 14 as new cluster emerges, posing a challenge to health workers

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda’s Ebola caseload increased to 14 in the last week, Africa’s top public health agency said Thursday, with a new cluster emerging from a 4-year-old child who recently died of the infectious disease.

Three of five new cases have been confirmed as Ebola, with two cited as probably Ebola, Dr. Ngashi Ngongo of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters.

The Africa CDC reported that there was no direct epidemiological link between the new cluster and another one accounting for nine previous Ebola cases, including the first victim of the outbreak.

Ebola is now spreading in five of Uganda’s 146 districts, it said. That includes Kampala, the capital, where the outbreak was declared on Jan. 30. Two Ebola deaths have been confirmed.

Local health officials have not been giving regular updates on the outbreak, raising concerns about a lack of transparency. At least three hospitals in Kampala have handled confirmed or suspected Ebola cases without later informing the public of it.

Dr. Charles Olaro, the director of health services in the Ministry of Health, told The Associated Press he believed the situation was under control. Officials were not required to give updates on every incident, he said.

Tracing contacts is key to stemming the spread of Ebola, and there are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola that’s infecting people in Uganda.

Ebola, which is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials, manifests as a deadly hemorrhagic fever. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Scientists suspect the first person infected with Ebola in an outbreak acquired the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat.

Ugandan officials are still investigating the source of the latest outbreak.

The first victim was a male nurse who died the day before the outbreak was declared. He had sought treatment at multiple facilities in Kampala and in eastern Uganda, where he also visited a traditional healer in trying to diagnose his illness, before later dying in Kampala.

Uganda’s last outbreak, discovered in September 2022, killed at least 55 people before it was declared over in January 2023.

Dr. Emmanuel Batiibwe, a hospital director who helped lead efforts to stop that outbreak, described the current one as “amorphous,” throwing up sporadic cases that require more serious surveillance to locate and isolate contacts.

Ebola in Uganda is the latest in a trend of outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers in the east African region. Tanzania declared an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg disease in January, and in December Rwanda announced its own outbreak of Marburg was over.

Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed hundreds. The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the disease’s largest death toll.

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.