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Second patient dies of Ebola in Uganda: health official
BWERA, Uganda, June 13, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A 50-year-old woman who tested
positive for Ebola in Uganda has died, a health ministry official told AFP
Thursday, the second fatality since the virus spread from neighbouring
Democratic Republic of Congo.
“The deceased has been confirmed as the grandmother of the five-year-old
boy who died. Both victims had attended the burial of an Ebola patient in
Congo, but returned to Uganda”, the official told AFP on condition of
anonymity.
Arrangements are being made to bury the woman in Kasese, a district in
western Uganda close to the DRC border, the official added.
The health ministry announced Wednesday that Uganda had recorded three
cases of Ebola infection in the first known cross-border spread since an
outbreak began in eastern DRC last August.
All three were from a single family that travelled to DRC to care for a
relative, who also died of Ebola.
The five-year-old later died and his three-year-old brother and 50-year-old
grandmother tested positive for the virus upon returning to Uganda.
The family was quarantined in a hospital in Bwera, in Kasese district.
Eight others who had been in contact with them were also being monitored in
an isolation ward.
They, and frontline health workers, are due to be vaccinated Friday with a
new drug designed to protect them against the virus, the health ministry
said.
East Africa has been on high alert since the outbreak was declared in the
eastern DRC provinces of North Kivu and Ituri.
More than 2,000 cases have been recorded in DRC — around two-thirds of
them fatal.
The World Health Organization will hold an emergency meeting Friday to
determine whether to declare the outbreak “a public health emergency of
international concern,” a major shift in mobilisation against the disease.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1303 hrs