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A second Ebola death in Uganda, a 4-year-old child, marks a setback in efforts to contain the outbreak declared on 30 January.
The child, who died on Tuesday, had been receiving treatment at the main referral facility in Kampala. This follows the earlier death of a male nurse, the first recorded victim of the outbreak.
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the child’s death on Saturday and said efforts were underway to bolster surveillance and contact tracing measures.
While Ugandan officials had previously expressed confidence in controlling the outbreak, citing the discharge of eight Ebola patients earlier in February, this recent fatality raises concerns.
The WHO’s Uganda office released a brief statement acknowledging the death but provided no further details. Local health officials have yet to comment on the case.
The initial victim, a male nurse, had sought medical attention at various facilities in both Kampala and eastern Uganda before succumbing to the disease. He had also consulted a traditional healer in an attempt to diagnose his illness.
The successful treatment of eight patients who had been contacts of that man, including some of his relatives, had left local health officials anticipating the end of the outbreak. But they are still investigating its source.
Tracing contacts is key to stemming the spread of Ebola, and there are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola that’s infecting people in Uganda.
More than 20,000 travellers are screened daily for Ebola at Uganda’s different border crossing points, according to WHO, which supports the work.
The WHO has given Uganda at least $3 million to support its Ebola response, but there have been concerns about adequate funding in the wake of the US administration’s decision to terminate 60 per cent of USAID’s foreign aid contracts.
Dithan Kiragga, executive director of the Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation, a non-governmental group that supports Ebola surveillance in Uganda, said his group had stopped its work supporting local health authorities in screening travelling passengers after the termination of its contract with USAID.
The five-year contract, signed in 2022 and worth $27 million, employed 85 full-time staff who were employed in a range of public health activities, Dr Kiragga said.
Charles Olaro, the director of health services at Uganda’s Ministry of Health, said that US aid cuts hurt the work of some non-governmental groups supporting the response to infectious diseases.
“There are challenges, but we need to adjust to the new reality,” Dr Olaro said.
Ebola, which is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials, manifests as a deadly hemorrhagic fever. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.
Scientists suspect the first person infected with Ebola in an outbreak acquired the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat.
Uganda’s last outbreak, discovered in September 2022, killed at least 55 people before it was declared over in January 2023.
Ebola in Uganda is the latest in a trend of outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers in the east African region. Tanzania declared an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg disease in January, and in December, Rwanda announced its own outbreak of Marburg was over.
Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed hundreds. The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the disease’s largest death toll.
Ebola was discovered in 1976 in simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.
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