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by Anna Borzello GULU, Uganda (AFP) - An operation to contain an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in northern Uganda gathered steam Tuesday after 37 people died from the gruesome, contagious disease as 10 new cases were reported.
Since Monday evening, six new cases were admitted to Lachor Mission Hospital outside Gulu and four to the government hospital in the town, said Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Ochora, who heads a specially formed task force. Gulu is about 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of Kampala. As of Monday, the outbreak, the first reported in Uganda, had claimed 37 lives with 75 cases reported. Some cases were in squalid overpopulated camps for people displaced by a rebel war. According to Ochora, only seven people have died since Ebola was positively identified on Saturday, suggesting that this indicated a drop-off in the fatality rate. "Some of those hospitalized have recovered but we have left them in quarantine so that they do not infect anybody," Ochora said. Like most of those who contracted the disease, the latest cases appeared in the Gulu district. But on Monday, it emerged that some patients were from the neighboring Kitgum district, and in some cases from places more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Gulu. "Definitely its worrying, there is nothing to celebrate here," Ochora said of the apparent growth in the affected area. While Ebola takes its toll with more speed and viciousness than almost any other disease, it is in theory at least, relatively easily contained because although contagious it is not infectious, being transmitted by touch, not through the air. There are also plans to establish cemeteries in each sub-county to bury those who die of Ebola. Soldiers and trained health workers will cover the bodies in plastic and bury them. Gulu residents have been asked to suspend their cultural practices associated with burial for fear that these help spread the disease. Many of those who have contracted Ebola are thought to have done so at funerals of earlier victims, where tradition decrees that mourners wash the corpse together before eating a communal meal. No direct medical cure exists for Ebola, which causes fever, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding from the mouth, nose and anus and the liquefying of some internal organs. Some outbreaks killed up to 90% of those infected. The virus killed 245 people in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo five years ago. Three World Health Organization experts arrived Tuesday in Gulu and traveled with an army escort to the nearby settlement of Rottobilo in Aswa county, where a young boy, the first suspected case in the Ebola outbreak, died on September 17th. The team is due to set up a surveillance center there. Ochora said there were still no plans to cut Gulu off from the rest of the country. "We have at the moment only quarantined three sub-counties where the cases are coming from," he said, stressing that this measure was being imposed "through sensitization and not through road blocks." He said people were being advised to stay in their areas in radio broadcasts and by visiting health officials. |
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