A male nurse in Uganda has died of Ebola, the first recorded death by the disease in the East African country since an outbreak ended in 2023, health officials said.
The 32-year-old nurse worked at Mulago National Specialised Hospital in Kampala, Diana Atwine, permanent secretary of Uganda’s health ministry, said Thursday.
The nurse died Wednesday of the Sudan strain of Ebola, Atwine said.
He sought treatment at several hospitals and had also consulted with a traditional healer before tests confirmed an Ebola diagnosis, health officials said.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X that his organization was supporting Uganda’s efforts to contain an Ebola outbreak in Uganda with a $1 million allocation from WHO’s Contingency Fund for Emergencies.
Atwine said on her X social media account that “rapid response teams are fully deployed, contact tracing is underway, and all necessary measures are in place to contain the situation. We assure the public that we are in full control.”
Contact tracing, however, could be challenging in Kampala, with its population of 4 million people.
The health ministry, however, reported that it had identified 44 contacts of the late nurse, which included 30 other health care workers.
The symptoms of Ebola, an often fatal disease, include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain, and at times internal and external bleeding.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health care workers and family members caring for someone with Ebola are at high risk for contracting the disease.
WHO said Ebola “is transmitted to people from wild animals (such as fruit bats, porcupines and non-human primates) and then spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g., bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.”
Ebola’s fatality rate is around 50%, WHO said on its website, but it also said that fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in some outbreaks.
