Uganda declares end to Ebola virus outbreak, cooperation success

The World Health Organization (WHO) officially ended the latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Uganda on Wednesday.

The infections had occurred in the major cities of Kampala and Jinja, fueling concerns that the disease could spread well into 2023. In 2019, Uganda suffered an outbreak of the Zaire strain of Ebola.

Delivering the good news, the head of the UN health agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, congratulated the authorities for their “robust” response to the outbreak, just four months after the first case of the Ebola virus was confirmed. , this time caused by the ebolavirus strain from Sudan, in the central district of Mubende.

“Uganda has shown that you can beat ebola when the whole system works together and when everything necessary is available: from an alert mechanism to a search and care mechanism for affected people and their contacts, through the full participation in the response (to the outbreak) of the affected communities,” said Tedros.

unwanted visitor

In all, 55 people have died and 87 have recovered in the latest outbreak, according to the World Health Organization. Its regional director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, noted that There are no vaccines yet to treat the Sudanese strain.

“This has been one of the most difficult Ebola outbreaks in the last five years,” Moeti explained, noting that fortunately “Uganda has continuously maintained and refined its response.”

“Two months ago, it seemed that Ebola would cast a dark shadow over the country well into 2023 (…) but this victory starts the year on a note of great hope for Africa.”

A golden recipe: the commitment of the community

The virus is transmitted to people through wild animals and can be spread by direct contact with the blood or other body fluids of infected people. Symptoms of Ebola – formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever – include fever and vomiting, accompanied by internal and external bleeding.

To stop transmission of the virus on this occasion, WHO worked with national health teams to explain the threat to populations at risk and the need to restrict movement in the Mubende and Kasanda hotspots.

“While we have scaled up our efforts to launch a strong response in the nine affected districts, the magic recipe has been our communities, which They understood the importance of doing what is necessary to end the outbreak and took action,” said Dr Jane Ruth Aceng Acero, Uganda’s Minister of Health.

The WHO also helped trace more than 4,000 people who were in contact with people infected with the virus. Once identified, these contacts were monitored for 21 days before being discharged.

The last patient was discharged on November 30, when the 42-day countdown to the end of the outbreak began, according to the WHO, which noted that the case fatality rate for this outbreak was 47%.

share the load

The UN health organization provided nearly 6.5 million Swiss dollars for the initial response and another 3 million to support preparedness in six neighboring countries.

Practical support from WHO included the deployment of experts, training in contact tracing, testing and patient care, as well as the construction of isolation and treatment centers and the provision of test kits for laboratory.

Thanks to these joint efforts, “the processing time for Ebola samples has been reduced from several days to six hours,” the World Health Organization said, adding that it had helped protect frontline health workers by putting a constant supply of personal protective equipment at your disposal.

Prepared for the next outbreak

WHO also included collaboration with partners such as vaccine developers, researchers, donors and Ugandan health authorities, to identify candidate vaccines and therapies for inclusion in trials.

Three trial vaccines have been identified and more than 5,000 doses arrived in Uganda in record time last month, 79 days after the outbreak was declared.

Although no vaccines were deployed this time, the UN agency insisted that the rapid response to the health threat “marks the global capacity to respond to rapidly evolving outbreaks and prevent them from becoming larger.”

The Sudanese Ebola virus is one of six strains of the disease for which there are no approved therapies or vaccines. To counteract this handicap, the WHO explained that Uganda had been able to draw on its long experience in responding to epidemics and “quickly bolster critical areas of the response.”