A 32-year-old male nurse at Mulago National Referral Hospital died on Wednesday.
Uganda’s Ministry of Health has confirmed an outbreak of the Ebola virus in the capital in Kampala, following tests from three national reference laboratories.
The patient, a 32-year-old male nurse at Mulago National Referral Hospital, presented with fever-like symptoms and sought treatment at several health facilities, including traditional healers.
According to the Health Ministry Permanent Secretary, Dr Diana Atwine, “the patient presented with a five-day history of high fever, chest pain and difficulty in breathing, which later progressed to unexplained bleeding from multiple body sites.”
The patient’s condition rapidly deteriorated, leading to multi-organ failure and ultimately death at Mulago National Referral Hospital on Wednesday.
Post-mortem samples confirmed the Sudan Ebola Virus Disease strain.
This is the seventh outbreak in Uganda since the first case of the Sudan Ebola strain in 2000. The outbreaks have claimed 224 lives of the 325 confirmed cases.
In response to the latest outbreak, the Health ministry has activated a dedicated incident management team and dispatched rapid response teams to the affected areas.
Forty-four contacts of the deceased man have been listed for tracing, including family members and 30 health workers, the ministry said.
However, contact tracing could be challenging as Kampala, where the latest Ebola infection cropped up, is a crowded city of more than four million people and a crossroads for traffic to South Sudan, Congo, Rwanda and other countries.
The patient had also sought treatment at a public hospital in Mbale, 240km east of Kampala near the border with Kenya, the ministry said.
The highly infectious haemorrhagic fever is transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids and tissues. Symptoms include headache, vomiting of blood, muscle pain and bleeding.
Dr Atwine said vaccination against Ebola for all contacts of the deceased would begin immediately.
Ugandan authorities have used capacity built up over years, such as laboratory testing, patient care know-how, contact tracing and other skills, to bring recent Ebola outbreaks under control in relatively short order.
The country last suffered an outbreak in late 2022 and that was declared over on January 11, 2023 after nearly four months. In the last outbreak killed 55 of the 164 people infected and the dead included six health workers.
There is currently no approved vaccine for the Sudan strain of Ebola, though Uganda received some trial vaccine doses during the last outbreak.
An outbreak of Marburg, a cousin of Ebola, was declared in neighbouring Tanzania last week. Uganda also borders Rwanda, which has just emerged from a Marburg outbreak, and Congo where outbreaks of Ebola are common.
