Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The year-old male nurse was an employee of Mulago Hospital, the main referral facility in the capital, Kampala, Diana Atwine, permanent secretary of the health ministry, told reporters Thursday. After developing a fever, he was treated at several locations in Uganda before multiple lab tests confirmed he had been suffering from Ebola.
The man died on Wednesday and the Sudan strain of Ebola was confirmed following postmortem tests, Atwine said. Tracing contacts is key to stemming the spread of Ebola, and there are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola. Uganda's last outbreak, discovered in September , killed at least 55 people before it was declared over in January Confirmation of Ebola in Uganda is the latest in a trend of outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers in the east African region.
Tanzania declared an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg disease earlier this month, and in December Rwanda announced that its own outbreak of Marburg was over. The ongoing Marburg outbreak in northern Tanzania 's Kagera region has killed at least two people, according to local health authorities. Kampala's outbreak could prove difficult to respond to, because the city has a highly mobile population of about 4 million.
The nurse who died had sought treatment at a hospital just outside Kampala and later traveled to Mbale, in the country's east, where he was admitted in a public hospital.
Health authorities said the man also sought the services of a traditional healer. Emmanuel Batiibwe, a physician who helped lead Uganda's efforts to stop the country's outbreak, told The Associated Press that he expected a swift response in tracing all possible Ebola contacts in Kampala and elsewhere. Ebola, which is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials, manifests as a deadly hemorrhagic fever.
