A 5-year-old boy, now deceased, was the first reported case of Ebola in Uganda. Even as health authorities in Uganda tries to contain the fallouts from this first case, two(2) more people in Uganda have tested positive for the highly contagious disease that has killed nearly 1,400 in the DRC alone.
The boy was from a Congolese family who crossed into Uganda earlier in the week. According to the World Health Organization, he died overnight. Ugandan authorities said the two new cases are his 3-year-old brother and 50-year-old grandmother, both of whom have since been isolated at a hospital near the border of DRC and Uganda.
Eight people had been in contact with the confirmed cases and are being followed up on, the Ugandan Ministry of Health said in a statement.
Authorities are trying to determine how the family, exposed to the virus via a sick relative in the DRC, managed to cross a border where health officials have been screening millions of travelers for months. They said the family likely did not pass through official border points, where health workers screen all travelers for high temperature and isolate those who show signs of illness.
The World Health Organization said an expert committee would meet on Friday in Geneva to discuss whether to declare the Ebola outbreak a global health emergency.
The WHO committee has twice decided that the current outbreak, while of “deep concern,” was not yet a global health emergency. International spread, however, is one of the major criteria the United Nations agency considers before such a declaration. Millions of travelers along DRC’s border with Uganda and Rwanda have been screened for Ebola since the outbreak began. WHO has advised against travel restrictions.
This has become the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history since the first cases were declared in August.
