18 Confirmed Ebola Disease cases reported in Uganda, including 23 deaths.

Reuters.

Uganda’s Ebola caseload has jumped to a further 18 persons, fueling fears of a spreading outbreak that involves a strain for which a vaccine has not yet been found.

The death toll of confirmed cases has also risen to 23.

The Ebola Sudan strain

The east African country last week announced the outbreak of Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever whose symptoms include intense body weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat, vomiting, diarrhoea and rashes among others.

The current outbreak, attributed to the Ebola Sudan strain, appears to have started in a small village in Mubende district around the beginning of September, authorities have said. Cases have now also been reported In Mubende, Kyegegwa and Kassanda disctircts.

Relatively lower fatality

The World Health Organization says the Ebola Sudan strain is less transmissible and has shown a lower fatality rate in previous outbreaks than Ebola Zaire, a strain that killed nearly 2 300 people in the 2018 - 2020 epidemic in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.