CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA: IRIN Weekly Round-up 46

UGANDA: Ebola fever still spreading

The international medical aid agency Medecins sans frontieres (MSF) has
confirmed the outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in a third Ugandan
district. In a statement issued on Monday, MSF said it had sent a team to
Kiryandongo in Masindi District - 180 km northwest of Kampala - to assist
in containing the new outbreak. Two staff members were helping to set up
an isolation ward after two people died from Ebola symptoms towards the
end of lat week, it said. A third person in Masindi had tested positive
for the disease. This new outbreak was on Monday linked to a woman who
fled from a hospital to her home town once she had been suspected of
having contracted the disease, Ugandan media reported. Dr Sam Okware, head
of the National Task Force on Ebola, said the woman had died two weeks
earlier, but officials had not immediately known of her case. Three
relatives of the woman had also died in Masindi.

Uganda's Director-General of Health Services, Dr Francis Omaswa, said on
Tuesday he had spoken to his Kenyan counterpart, who had already located
those Kenyans who attended the funeral in Masindi. The seven had shown no
signs of Ebola, but were quarantined in their homes and would be monitored
for 42 days before being declared free of infection, a Kenyan health
ministry statement cited by local media stated. In all, some 150 people
who attended the funeral in Masindi were under medical surveillance,
Omaswa said.

The Ugandan Ministry of Health reported just one new laboratory-confirmed
case of Ebola (in an undisclosed location) as of Monday. This was reported
by the WHO on Wednesday. No further deaths had been reported as of 14
November, it said. The ministry reported cumulative figures of 321 cases,
including 104 deaths, for Gulu District in the north, where the outbreak
was first confirmed, WHO added. It did not disclose any new figures for
Mbarara and Masindi districts.