The country has experienced several epidemics, the most recent of which, in 2019, had left at least five dead.
Le Monde with AFP
The Ugandan Health Minister announced, Tuesday, September 20, the presence of an “epidemic” of Ebola virus which caused the death of a man in the center of the country, three years after the last death identified. “Uganda confirms an epidemic of Ebola virus disease (MVE) in the Mubende district. The confirmed case is a 24 -year -old man […] who presented symptoms of the MVE and then succumbed,” said the ministry on his official Twitter account.
This case comes from a rare strain from Sudan and which had not been reported in Uganda since 2012, said the World Health Organization (WHO) in Africa, which announced to deploy “a team and Equipment to help in investigations and response “. Uganda has already experienced Ebola epidemics, the most recent of which in 2019, had left at least five dead. In 2000, 200 people died during an epidemic in the north of the country.
Ebola virus disease is often fatal, but vaccines and treatments now exist against this hemorrhagic fever which is transmitted to humans by infected animals. Human transmission is made by bodily liquids, with the main symptoms of fevers, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), neighbor of Uganda, has known fourteen epidemics of Ebola, the last of which was declared between April and July 2022. A case of Ebola had been reported in August in the East of the DRC, in the province of North Kivu, border of Rwanda and Uganda. According to the WHO, this case was “linked to a strain of the tenth epidemic of 2018 and not to a new introduction of the virus”.