Uganda on Wednesday declared an end to an outbreak of the Ebola virus that emerged nearly four months ago and killed 55 people.
“We have successfully controlled the Ebola outbreak in Uganda,” Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng said at a ceremony in the central district of Mubende where the disease was first detected in September.
The move was confirmed in a statement published by the World Health Organization.
Aceng said January 11 marked 113 days since the start of the often-fatal dengue fever outbreak in the East African country.
According to the WHO, the outbreak of the disease ends when there are no new cases for 42 consecutive days – twice the incubation period of Ebola.
“Uganda ended the Ebola outbreak quickly by implementing key control measures such as surveillance, contact and infection tracing, prevention and control,” a WHO statement quoted the minister as saying.
“As we expand our efforts to provide a robust response in the nine affected counties, the magic bullet is our community understanding the importance of doing what is needed to stop this outbreak, and taking action.”
The WHO said there were a total of 142 confirmed cases, 55 deaths and 87 recovered patients.
The Ugandan outbreak was caused by the Sudanese Ebola virus, one of the six species of Ebola virus for which there is currently no vaccine.
But three vaccine candidates – one developed by the University of Oxford and the Jenner Institute in England, another by the Sabin Vaccine Institute in the United States, and a third by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) – are being tested in Uganda.
‘Strong response’
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus congratulated Uganda for what he said was “a robust and comprehensive response that led to today’s victory against Ebola”.
“Uganda has shown that Ebola can be defeated when all systems work together, from having an alert system in place to find and care for affected people and contacts to getting the full participation of affected communities in the response,” he said. statement.
“The lessons learned and the systems put in place for this outbreak will protect Ugandans and others in the years to come.”
The last confirmed patient was discharged from the hospital on November 30, according to health officials.
Aceng said the outbreak was the seventh in Uganda, and the fifth caused by the Sudanese virus, one of the six species of Ebola.
“The source of this outbreak like many others is still unknown,” he said at the ceremony.
Ebola is named after a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo where it was discovered in 1976.
Human transmission is through body fluids, with the main symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea.
Outbreaks are difficult to contain, especially in urban environments.
An infected person is not contagious until symptoms appear, which is after an incubation period of between two and 21 days.
Uganda, which shares a border with the DRC, has experienced several Ebola outbreaks, most recently in 2019 when at least five people died.
The worst epidemic in West Africa between 2013 and 2016 killed more than 11,300 people. DRC has experienced more than a dozen epidemics, the most of which killed 2,280 people in 2020.