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US health officials have issued a travel alert, urging Americans visiting Uganda to exercise caution amid a renewed Ebola outbreak.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped short of advising against travel to the country, it stressed the importance of heightened precautions.
The CDC recommends that travellers avoid contact with individuals exhibiting Ebola symptoms and refrain from visiting healthcare facilities unless absolutely necessary.
This advice comes after Ugandan authorities confirmed the death of a nurse from Ebola in a Kampala hospital last week. It marks the first Ebola fatality in Uganda since the previous outbreak concluded earlier this year. The CDC is actively supporting Ugandan health officials in their response to the emerging threat.
World Health Organization officials this week noted the “extensive travel” of the infected person, who visited a number of medical facilities while symptomatic, “increasing the risk of widespread transmission.”
The CDC has worked in Uganda for decades, helping the country build up lab testing capabilities to detect threatening germs. The agency established an office in the east African nation 25 years ago and has 114 people there right now. The U.S. agency has offered to help Uganda’s health ministry with such tasks as contact tracing and infection control.
Working to stop overseas outbreaks before they reach America’s shores was complicated by an order last week that told CDC officials to stop working with the WHO.
On Wednesday, an agency spokesperson said CDC personnel have been cleared to speak one-on-one with their WHO counterparts related to response activities in Uganda and two other countries with different disease outbreaks — Tanzania and Congo.
Ebola factbox
What you need to knpw
What is Ebola?
Ebola is an acute viral disease, with its first known case appearing in 1976 in simultaneous outbreaks in Nzara, Sudan, and Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the WHO. It takes its name from the Ebola River near the latter Congolese village.
Once infected, the virus will attack the victim’s internal organs. People who have contracted the virus can then expect symptoms including fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and sometimes bleeding.
How is it spread?
Fruit bats are thought to be the natural hosts of the virus. Humans become infected during close contact with the blood, organs and other bodily fluids of animals harbouring the disease.
Other animals which have spread the disease in Africa include primates, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.
WHO is the U.N.’s specialized health agency and is the only organization mandated to coordinate global responses to acute health crises, particularly outbreaks of new diseases and persistent threats including Ebola, AIDS and mpox.
This week President Javier Milei has ordered Argentina’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization due to profound differences with the U.N. agency, a presidential spokesperson said.
Milei’s action echoes that of his ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, who began the process of pulling the United States out of WHO with an executive order on his first day back in office on Jan. 21.
Argentina’s decision is based on “profound differences in health management, especially during the (COVID19) pandemic,” spokesperson Manuel Adorni said at a news conference in Buenos Aires. He said that WHO guidelines at the time had led to the largest shutdown “in the history of mankind.”
He also said that WHO lacked independence because of the political influence of some countries, without elaborating which countries.
Argentina will not allow an international organization to intervene in its sovereignty “and much less in our health,” Adorni added.
