The death toll in Uganda's first outbreak of the incurable Ebola virus has risen to 37. New cases have been found in densely populated areas well beyond the previously presumed limits of the outbreak, the head of a task force said yesterday.
Thirty-three people were reported to have been killed by the viral haemorrhagic fever as of Sunday, when 62 cases had been reported. The outbreak was thought to be limited to an area about 30 km from the town of Gulu, itself some 300 km north of the capital.
Speaking from Gulu, Lieut-Col Walter Ochora said that a total of 37 people were known to have died from Ebola.
Col Ochora said some 75 confirmed Ebola cases had been reported in all, 71 in Gulu district and four in neighbouring Kitgum district, where two patients had died. Kitgum town is about 100 km north-east of Gulu.
New cases have emerged from "new focal points," he explained.
Some of the cases arose in overpopulated camps for people displaced by a rebel war, said Col Ochora, the chairman of the local council and the head of a district task force set up to contain the outbreak.
Five new Ebola patients came from Pece, a crowded suburb of Gulu municipality, and from camps near Atiak, about 70 km north of Gulu.
Another case was reported in Amuru, 40 km west of Gulu, and another in near Palabek, on the road from Atiak to Kitgum.
Col Ochara said that some Ebola patients in Gulu were showing signs of recovery, but were being kept in quarantine in hospital.
Ebola has a fatality rate of up to 90 per cent and is spread by direct contact with a sick patient.
"The situation is under control. We are coming up with guidelines for the community and health workers and we will be meeting tomorrow [Tuesday] to disseminate them in local languages across the district," Col Ochara said.
Yesterday, a national task force on haemorrhagic fevers first set up two years ago and reconvened last week, before the illness in Gulu was identified as Ebola, continued its series of twice-daily meetings.
The Health Minister, Mr Crispus Kiyonga; the director general of health services, Mr Francis Omaswa, and WHO officials sit on the task force.
More WHO experts are due to arrive there from Geneva. "It's going to be a sizeable team and will fly directly to Gulu to help set up an infection control exercise," a WHO spokesman said.
While Ebola has no known cure, doctors in Gulu are "balancing the patients' fluids and electrolytes, maintaining their oxygen status and blood pressure and treating them for any complicating infections," a health worker in Gulu said.
"Appropriate isolation, barrier nursing and facilities for supportive treatment have been established. We have provided both international and national technical support to be resident in Gulu district," the health ministry said in a statement.
"The response of the international community has been enthusiastic and we are confident that we will receive the necessary support to contain this epidemic," Mr Omwasa wrote in the statement.
Doctors in Gulu believe that many of those infected could have contracted the disease at funerals, after washing their hands in a shared bowl of water before eating, a tradition that symbolises unity.