"Uganda confirms an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Mubende district. The confirmed case is a 24-year-old man... who presented with symptoms of EVD and later succumbed," he said. said the ministry on its official Twitter account.
This case comes from a rare strain from Sudan, which had not been reported in Uganda since 2012, said WHO Africa, which announced that it was deploying "a team and equipment to help in the investigations and the response". .
Uganda has experienced Ebola outbreaks before, the most recent of which dates back to 2019, killing at least five people.
In 2000, 200 people died in an epidemic in the north of the country.
Ebola virus disease is often fatal, but vaccines and treatments now exist against this hemorrhagic fever, which is transmitted to humans by infected animals.
Human transmission is through body fluids, with the main symptoms of fever, vomiting, bleeding, diarrhea.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), neighboring Uganda, has experienced 14 Ebola outbreaks, the last of which was declared between April and July 2022.
A case of Ebola was reported in August in eastern DRC, in the province of North Kivu, bordering Rwanda and Uganda.
According to the WHO, this case was "linked to a strain of the 10th epidemic of 2018 and not to a new introduction of the virus".
© 2022 AFP