Second Ebola death in Uganda, raising concern over disease surveillance in outbreak

Uganda’s final outbreak, found in September 2022, killed not less than 55 individuals earlier than it was declared over in January 2023. Representative file picture.
| Photo Credit: AP

A 4-year-old baby turned the second individual to die of Ebola in Uganda, the World Health Organization mentioned Saturday (March 1, 2025), in a setback for well being officers who had hoped for a fast finish to the outbreak that started on the finish of January 2025.

The baby had been hospitalized on the important referral facility in Kampala, the capital of the East African nation, and died Tuesday (February 25, 2025), the WHO workplace in Uganda mentioned in a quick assertion. That assertion mentioned WHO and others are working to strengthen surveillance and get in touch with tracing.

There have been no different particulars concerning the death and native well being officers weren’t commenting on the case.

The death undermines Ugandan officers’ assertions of an outbreak below management after eight Ebola sufferers have been discharged earlier in February. The first sufferer was a male nurse who died the day earlier than the outbreak was declared on January 30. He had sought remedy at a number of services in Kampala and in japanese Uganda, the place he additionally visited a standard healer in attempting to diagnose his sickness, earlier than later dying in Kampala.

The profitable remedy of eight sufferers who had been contacts of that man, together with a few of his relations, had left native well being officers anticipating the top of the outbreak. But they’re nonetheless investigating its supply.

Tracing contacts is essential to stemming the unfold of Ebola, and there aren’t any accepted vaccines for the Sudan pressure of Ebola that is infecting individuals in Uganda.

Over 20,000 vacationers are screened each day for Ebola at Uganda’s totally different border crossing factors, in accordance with WHO, which helps the work.

The WHO has given Uganda not less than $3 million to help its Ebola response, however there have been issues about sufficient funding in the wake of the U.S. administration’s resolution to terminate 60% of USAID’s international assist contracts.

Dithan Kiragga, government director of the Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation, a non-governmental group that helps Ebola surveillance in Uganda, informed The Associated Press on Friday (February 28, 2025) that his group had stopped its work supporting native well being authorities in screening touring passengers after the termination of its contract with USAID. The five-year contract, signed in 2022 and price $27 million, employed 85 full-time employees who have been employed in a spread of public well being actions, Dr. Kiragga mentioned.

Charles Olaro, the director of well being providers at Uganda’s Ministry of Health, mentioned that U.S. assist cuts damage the work of some non-governmental teams supporting the response to infectious ailments.

“There are challenges, but we need to adjust to the new reality,” Dr. Olaro mentioned, talking of the lack of U.S. funding.

Ebola, which is unfold by contact with the bodily fluids of an contaminated individual or contaminated supplies, manifests as a lethal hemorrhagic fever. Symptoms embrace fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle ache and at occasions inner and exterior bleeding.

Scientists suspect the primary individual contaminated with Ebola in an outbreak acquired the virus by contact with an contaminated animal or consuming its uncooked meat.

Uganda’s final outbreak, found in September 2022, killed not less than 55 individuals earlier than it was declared over in January 2023.

Ebola in Uganda is the most recent in a pattern of outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers in the east African area. Tanzania declared an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg disease in January, and in December, Rwanda introduced its personal outbreak of Marburg was over.

Uganda has had a number of Ebola outbreaks, together with one in 2000 that killed lots of. The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed greater than 11,000 individuals, the disease’s largest death toll.

Ebola was found in 1976 in simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, the place it occurred in a village close to the Ebola River, after which the disease is known as.