Child dies of Ebola in Uganda; concern rise over disease surveillance in outbreak

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% of USAID's foreign aid contracts.

In a setback for health officials, a 4-year-old child became the second person to die of Ebola in Uganda, the World Health Organisation said in a statement. The officials who had hoped for a quick end to the outbreak that began at the end of January, Associated Press reported.

The child was hospitalised at the main referral facility in Kampala, the capital of the East African country, and died Tuesday. The statement said WHO and others are working to strengthen surveillance and contact tracing.

The death undermines Ugandan officials' assertions of an outbreak under control after eight Ebola patients were discharged earlier.

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.

Over 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% 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, told The Associated Press on Friday that 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 USD 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, speaking of the loss of US funding.

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, diarrhea, 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 in January 2023 declared the end of a nearly four-month Ebola outbreak that it briefly struggled to contain but was then able to swiftly bring under control despite the absence of a proven vaccine against the viral strain in question.

The outbreak killed 55 of the 143 people infected since September, according to health ministry figures. Six of the fatalities were health workers.

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.

With agency inputs