Ebola Crisis In Uganda Claims 29th Victim

An Ebola patient died in western Uganda on Monday, pushing the death toll from the current outbreak to 29, a local government official said.

Health authorities were still receiving new infections in Bundibugyo district, home to 250,000 people and the outbreak's epicentre, said the area's government administrator Sam Kazinga.

"The cumulative death toll has risen to 29 of the 119 people infected with Ebola," Kazinga told AFP.

"Today, we discharged five more people, including the medical superintendent of Bundibugyo hospital. We are still getting new cases of Ebola, but the situation seems to be normalising," he added.

Meanwhile the US Centers for Disease Control continued to test for the virus that was identified as new strain of Ebola, which experts say erupted in September but identified only in late November.

"The CDC laboratory is now fully working and we are testing blood quicker. We are continuing to get alert cases from people and our teams respond immediately," said Sam Okware, a health ministry official.

Hundreds of villagers and medics who had physical contacts with the patients have been put under observation, authorities said.

Spread by body fluids, the blood-borne disease was named after a small DR Congo river where it was discovered in 1976. It re-emerged in Sudan later the same year. Other outbreaks have been recorded in Ivory Coast, Gabon and Uganda.

Source-AFP
KAR/M