Uganda’s health minister declared the country Ebola-free on Tuesday \u200bfollowing the East African nation’s\u00a0latest outbreak\u00a0of the viral haemorrhagic \u200cdisease that infected 20 people and killed two of them.<\/p>\n
Uganda has suffered multiple outbreaks of Ebola since 2000, when it recorded its first epidemic, and officials say \u200bover the years the country gained expertise it has used to \u200bbring recent infections under control quickly with limited community spread.<\/p>\n
Fifteen \u2060people in the latest outbreak, declared in mid-May, were infected in \u200bneighbouring\u00a0Democratic Republic of Congo\u00a0– the epicentre of the epidemic, where the number \u200bof confirmed cases now stands at more than 3,000.<\/p>\n
The last Ebola patient in Uganda, a Congolese national, was discharged on June 22. That is short of the 42-day waiting \u200bperiod required by the World Health Organization to declare the end \u200bof an outbreak.<\/p>\n
But Health Minister Chris Baryomunsi said the announcement follows the “successful completion of \u200cthe \u2060mandatory 42-day monitoring period which begun after the discharge of the last Ugandan national, a locally transmitted patient, on the 16 of June, 2026.”<\/p>\n
Of the 20 confirmed cases during the outbreak, 18 were discharged while two \u200bdied from the virus, \u200bboth of \u2060whom were from the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n
“Throughout this period the ministry of health maintained intensive surveillance nationwide \u200band no new Ebola cases have been detected,” Baryomunsi \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
Officials say \u2060Uganda’s many tropical forests that teem with fruit bats, which are natural reservoirs for the virus, make it vulnerable to frequent outbreaks.<\/p>\n
The virus is transmitted \u2060through \u200bcontact with infected bodily fluids and tissue \u200band symptoms include headache, vomiting of blood, muscle pains and bleeding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Uganda’s health minister declared the country Ebola-free on Tuesday \u200bfollowing the East African nation’s\u00a0latest outbreak\u00a0of the viral haemorrhagic \u200cdisease that infected 20 people and killed two of them. Uganda has suffered multiple outbreaks of Ebola since 2000, when it recorded its first epidemic, and officials say \u200bover the years the country gained expertise it has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2854],"tags":[3016,75,132],"class_list":["post-21623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-health","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc","tag-ebola","tag-uganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21624,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21623\/revisions\/21624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}