Sudan strain Ebola virus kills one in Uganda – official

May 15, 2011 (KAMPALA) – Ebola virus killed one person in Uganda, health officials said at a press conference on Saturday. 30 people who came into contact with the deceased 12 year old girl are under observation.

Ebola haemorrhagic fever has standard cure. Ebola belongs to the virus family called Filoviridae. It is include strains; Sudan, Reston, Zaire, Bundibugyo and Ivory Coast.

The Ebola virus that was reported in Lewuro district, a few kilometres away from Kampala, is thought, by Uganda ministry of health officials, to be from Sudan.

“We are investigating the source of the disease, the people this girl had contact with but we know it’s a type of Ebola common in Sudan,” said Anthony Mbonye, the chief of Ebola task force in
Uganda.

Mbonye noted that “laboratory investigations confirmed the cause of death and illness” of the girl was Ebola.

Ebola is characterised by high fever, joint and muscle pains, headaches, dry throat, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney function, internal and external bleeding. It that kills over 50% of patients.

Ebola was first recorded in patients near the Ebola river in what is not the Democratic Rebuplic of Congo.

Sudan ebolavirus was first recorded in 1976 in a cotton factory in Nzara. It resurfaced in 2004 in Yambio, South Sudan, killing five.

In 2007, the Uganda Ministry of Health confirmed an outbreak of Ebola in the Bundibugyo District which the World Health Organisation confirmed was a new strain.

(ST)