Last Ebola patients discharged as MoH starts 42-day countdown to end outbreak

KAMPALA, UGANDA | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Health has embarked on a 42-day count-down to end the Sudan Ebola Virus outbreak after they announced on Wednesday that they currently have no active cases following the discharge of the two patients who were receiving treatment at Mulago National and Fort Portal Regional Referral hospitals.

In a statement, Charles Olaro the Director General of Health Services in the ministry revealed that a 55-year-old female from Matugga and a 45-year-old had been discharged after testing negative confirming that they are free from the virus.

While the outbreak of Ebola was first declared in late January following the death of a health worker at Mulago National Referral Hospital, the country only recorded another death a month after all the confirmed cases that were being treated at Mbale and Mulago hospitals had been discharged, an incident that baffled experts since the general feeling among the public was that the disease had been controlled.

Dr Eric Wabudeya, a Senior Consultant Pediatrician at the Acute Unit of Mulago Hospital acknowledged in a meeting attended by health workers that they had been caught off guard. Wabudeya’s team had received the child who became the second confirmed death in this outbreak in critical condition but never thought of conducting an Ebola test until after his death.

Olaro says while the countdown has begun,   surveillance will continue and vaccination of contacts of confirmed cases until the outbreak is declared over.

Figures by the World Health Organisation show Uganda has recorded 12 confirmed cases of the disease and two probable cases are the mother and a neonate who died in early February. Two people have been confirmed to have succumbed to complications of the disease.

Sudan virus disease (SVD) is a severe, often fatal illness affecting humans. Sudan virus (SUDV) was first identified in southern Sudan in June 1976. Since then, the virus has emerged periodically and up to now and before this current one, eight outbreaks caused by SUDV have been reported, five in Uganda and three in Sudan.

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