The Ugandan government says its anti-Ebola efforts were starting to yield success after initiating tight restrictions order in the outbreak’s epicentre which slowed the rate of infections.
Yoweri Museveni, Ugandan President said on Tuesday.
Recall that the deadly haemorrhagic fever struck Mubende and Kasanda districts few weeks ago and after imposing restrictions on the affected areas for 42 days or two incubation cycles – of the virus without a case.
“Bunyangabo and Kagadi districts have been dropped from the follow up list. “So I want to congratulate Kagadi and Bunyangabo,” Museveni said in a televised address.
Despite the restrictions imposed on the two districts when overall cases were falling some infected people were still slipping through a quarantine imposed on Mubende and Kasanda districts – the epicentre of the outbreak in central Uganda – and travelling to other regions and exporting cases there, Museveni said.
On Sunday, health minister Jane Ruth Aceng said an Ebola case had been confirmed in Jinja in the country’s east, the first time the outbreak had spread to a new region of the country from central Uganda where cases have been confined so far.
Museveni said while residents of Mubende had largely observed quarantine, those in Kasanda had flouted some rules, including a family that exhumed a relative who had died of Ebola for reburial, leading to more deaths.
“So here in Kasanda, in one family, 11 people are dead,” he said.
The leader also banned the movement of log transport trucks into and out of the two districts after it was established they were being used to smuggle people out of the quarantined areas.
He said authorities had handed names of all contacts of Ebola cases to immigration services at borders to prevent them from potentially travelling and exporting cases in other countries.
“Government is doing all it takes to control this epidemic and avoid exportation outside Uganda.”
The virus circulating in Uganda is the Sudan strain of Ebola, for which there is no proven vaccine, unlike the more common Zaire strain that spread during recent outbreaks in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
The east African country has so far recorded 141 cases and 55 deaths. The outbreak was declared in the country on September 20.
Reuters
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