Ebola spreading, death toll reaches 39

The death toll in the ebola fever epidemic, currently sweeping northern Uganda, now stands at 39 out of a reported 94 cases, according to figures issued by the Ugandan health ministry on Wednesday. Worryingly, the disease which was confirmed in the Gulu area by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 16 October, has now spread to neighbouring Kitgum district with the ministry reporting one death out of two suspected cases so far, humanitarian sources told IRIN. As yet, there has been no official confirmation that the disease has further spread to the Soroti and Lira districts, the sources added. WHO says a National Task Force for the Control of Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers has been established, under the health ministry’s authority, with WHO coordinating the international response to the outbreak. “Surveillance is under way in Gulu and isolation facilities are in place,” WHO said. “Training courses for district health personnel in unaffected areas will be held.” Uganda’s minister of state for primary healthcare, Beatrice Wabudeya, on Tuesday denied reports that restrictions had been placed on movement to and from the affected areas. “We are following international guidelines,” she said, according to the independent ‘Monitor’ newspaper. “Right now we cannot restrict people moving to and from Gulu. Movement will only be restricted when it becomes necessary.” However some schools have been closed, and funerals banned because of the ritual cleansing of the dead which is believed to have contributed to the spread of the disease. Wabudeya also denied claims that ebola - an agonising disease which is highly contagious and for which there is no known cure - had been brought into the country by Ugandan soldiers returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “We have not traced any infection from soldiers who returned from Congo,” she said. Some Ugandan officials have stated that rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) - who are active in the Gulu area - could have carried the virus from neighbouring Sudan where they have bases. The disease, whose symptoms include high fever, diarrhoea, muscle pain and both internal and external bleeding, originated in the jungles of Africa and Asia, WHO stated. It is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or semen of infected people. In Africa, it was first identified in 1976 in northern Zaire (now the DRC) along the Ebola river, and southern Sudan. In all, nearly 1,100 cases and 800 deaths have been documented since the virus was discovered. The current outbreak is the first in Uganda.