Ebola spreads to third district

The international medical aid agency, Medecins sans frontieres (MSF), has confirmed the outbreak of Ebola fever in a third Ugandan district. In a statement issued on Monday, MSF said it had sent a team to Kiryandongo in Masindi district - 180 km northwest of Kampala - to assist in containing the new outbreak. Two staff members are helping to set up an isolation ward, after two people died from Ebola symptoms over the weekend. A third person has also tested positive for the disease. As of Sunday, 12 November, the Ugandan Ministry of Health had reported cumulative figures for the northern Gulu district of 320 cases, including 102 deaths, the World Health Organisation (WHO) stated on Monday. It made no mention of the Masindi case, but the agency on Friday cited three laboratory-confirmed cases and two deaths in Mbarara district in the southwest. The Ugandan high commissioner to Tanzania, Katenta Apuli, at the weekend asked residents of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to "open up" and report suspected Ebola cases in order to reduce the regional spread of the virus. "We would completely get the disease out of the region in a very short time if people would be more clear," the Tanzanian 'Guardian' newspaper quoted Apuli as saying. The Ugandan government had taken a very open approach to the Ebola outbreak, providing people and the media with twice-daily update reports, and this had helped reduce the number of victims, Apuli added. Meanwhile, over 170 people in Gulu who were released from hospital after recovering from Ebola, were awaiting government assistance after they were shunned by their communities, the independent Ugandan 'Monitor' newspaper reported on Saturday. Dr Sam Okware, chairman of the National Ebola Task Force, said the government would start a programme next week to compensate survivors whose homes and property had been destroyed by fellow community members terrified of contracting the disease. "If your belongings or house have been destroyed, they will be replaced. The support is going to be more of material things, and not necessarily money," Okware said. "We are also starting a counselling programme to educate people that once someone recovers, they are not infectious: that they can only infect when they have symptoms of Ebola."