Uganda’s Ebola outbreak causes international alarm

The president of Uganda has rejected calls for a lockdown, despite an outbreak of a highly contagious strain of Ebola.

So far six people have died from the 31 cases that have been confirmed, but “it is feared that there could be many more”, said the BBC.

President Yoweri Museveni ruled out quarantine-type restrictions. “Ebola is not spread like corona[virus]”, he said, as it is not an airborne disease. It spreads, said the BBC, “by direct contact with bodily fluids and contaminated environments”.

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Museveni is instead focusing on contact tracing and the opening of a 51-bed treatment facility in Mubende, the epicentre of the outbreak, with a second facility due to be set up soon.

Two mobile laboratories would also be opened, the president said, so that people would not have to travel for tests and risk spreading the virus.

But the cases of the Ebola strain, for which there is no life-saving vaccine, are raising “international alarm”, said The Telegraph.

Medics have gone on strike because of a lack of adequate personal protective equipment such as gloves and masks, and infected patients are reportedly escaping from medical facilities. A medical student reportedly died after caring for a baby infected with Ebola.

Meanwhile, a “multipronged international effort” has begun to launch trials of experimental Ebola vaccines in Uganda, reported Science.

Nancy Sullivan, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the publication that more needs to be done. “All of the pandemic preparedness we’re doing isn’t enough,” she said.

Ebola is a severe acute viral illness. Early symptoms are similar to flu and malaria and include the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, diarrhoea, vomiting and both internal and external bleeding. Most patients killed by the disease die from blood loss, organ failure or shock.

The World Health Organization has warned that the “risk of international spread cannot be ruled out due to the active cross-border population movement”.