Ebola: Nurse in Uganda dies in country's first outbreak in two years

A nurse in Uganda has died of Ebola, a health official said on Thursday, marking the first recorded death in the country from the severe illness in two years.

The 32-year-old male nurse was an employee of Mulago Hospital, the main referral facility in the capital, Kampala, according to Diana Atwine, permanent secretary of the health ministry.

Atwine added in a social media post that the "rapid response teams are fully deployed, contact tracing is underway, and all necessary measures are in place to contain the situation".

"We assure the public that we are in full control," she wrote, while urging Ugandans to report any suspected cases.

After developing a fever, the nurse 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.

At least 44 contacts of the victim have been identified, including 30 health workers and patients at Mulago Hospital, according to Uganda’s Ministry of Health.

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 2022, killed at least 55 people before it was declared over in January 2023.

Outbreaks of viral haemorrhagic fevers

Confirmation of Ebola in Uganda is the latest in a trend of outbreaks of viral haemorrhagic 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 World Health Organization (WHO) will send an initial allocation of $1 million (€957,000) from a contingency fund to support Uganda's response, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, said in a brief statement posted on the social platform X.

"A full scale response is being initiated by the government and partners," the statement said.

Kampala's outbreak could prove difficult to respond to because the city has a highly mobile population of about 4 million.

Ebola, which is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials, manifests as a deadly haemorrhagic fever. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Scientists don’t know the natural reservoir of Ebola, but they suspect the first person infected in an outbreak acquired the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat.

Ugandan officials are still investigating the source of the current outbreak.