Surveillance stepped up after Ebola reported in Congo

Ugandan authorities have stepped health surveillance along the country's borders following an outbreak of Ebola in the Republic of Congo's Cuvette-Ouest region, the deputy health minister said on Sunday. An outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever, a severe, often-fatal disease, in northern and southwestern Uganda in 2000 claimed the lives of 170 people. More than 250 others contracted the disease but survived. Nine people have died of the disease in the Republic of Congo this month. "We have put our district epidemiology surveillance teams on alert to monitor all border entries, because the disease has been reported not very far from us," deputy health minister Michael Mukula told IRIN. "With cross-border movements, that is a cause for us to be on alert," he added. Uganda, he added, was working closely with neighbouring countries and the UN World Health Organization to keep a close watch over cross-border activities and to screen entrants to prevent a possible spread of the virus into Uganda. "We want to avoid a recurrence of 2000 when we lost lives. We lost some of our best medical practitioners, and therefore we are closely following the events in Congo," Mukula said. On Wednesday, Congolese health ministry officials confirmed that the deaths of nine people since early May along Congo's border with Gabon were caused by the Ebola virus. The outbreak occurred in the districts of Etoumbi and Mbomo. Of the 11 reported cases, one was laboratory-confirmed and 10 epidemiologically linked. Eighty-one contacts were being monitored - 68 in Etoumbi and 13 in Mbomo. The Ebola virus is transmitted through infected blood, semen and possibly urine and respiratory droplets. It takes three weeks to incubate and death usually occurs days after the appearance of the first symptoms. There is no known cure for Ebola, which kills 50 to 90 percent of those infected, depending on the strain of the virus.