The Ministry of Health in Uganda, on Tuesday, announced the country’s first fatality from the highly contagious Ebola virus since 2019, declaring an outbreak in the central district of Mubende.
This was in line with a statement released earlier on Tuesday by the World Health Organization noting that a 24-year-old man in Mubende had tested positive for “the relatively rare Sudan strain” of the virus.
WHO added that eight other suspected patients were receiving treatment as at the time of this report.
First identified in 1976 in the DRC (then Zaire), the virus, whose natural host is the bat, has since set off a series of epidemics in Africa, killing around 15,000 people.
At present there is no licenced medication to prevent or treat Ebola, although a range of experimental drugs are in development and thousands have been vaccinated in the DRC and some neighbouring countries.
The DRC has had more than a dozen epidemics, the deadliest killing 2,280 people in 2020.