How Ebola spreads
Early symptoms include fever, fatigue and headache.
13d agoWILLIAM WANYOIKEInfographics
The World Health Organisation has pledged Sh258 million (USD2 million) towards Ebola response in Uganda.
The WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus via Twitter on Thursday said this will come in handy for emergencies.
“To further support Uganda's response to the Ebola outbreak, I am releasing an additional $2 million (Sh258 million) from the World Health Organisation Contingency Fund for Emergencies,” Ghebreyesus said.
He said the WHO teams are also supporting surveillance, laboratories, logistics, infection prevention and control in hospitals, treatment centres and research.
The number of confirmed Ebola cases in Uganda rose to nine from three on Feb 11.
Uganda Health Ministry said that of the nine confirmed cases one person had died, seven were being treated in a hospital in Kampala and one was in a hospital in the eastern city of Mbale.
All eight patients are in stable condition and 265 contacts of the confirmed cases have been placed under quarantine.
Uganda launched a trial of a vaccine against the Sudan strain of the Ebola virus, following an outbreak in the country
There is currently no approved vaccine for the Sudan strain of Ebola, WHO said.
One does exist, however, for the Zaire strain, which has been prevalent in the past in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Symptoms of Ebola infection include fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and sore throat, followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, and internal and external bleeding.
Uganda is currently experiencing its sixth outbreak of the disease.
Forty contacts of the first victim of this outbreak will be vaccinated in this phase of the roll-out jointly conducted with the Ugandan authorities and the WHO, the UN agency said in a statement on Monday.
The previous outbreak of the Sudan strain in Uganda was confirmed in September 2022 and resulted in more than 70 deaths.
It was declared over in January 2023. Although Uganda had access to the same candidate vaccine at the time, trials could not be conducted before the outbreak ended.
