Uganda: Ebola death toll hits 28

(SomaliNet) The death toll of Ebola in Uganda hit 28 after three Ebola patients died in a western Uganda district of Bundibugyo on Sunday, an official said.

Bundibugyo is home to 250 000 people and the outbreak\'s epicentre, where health workers are struggling to contain the disease.

\"Since the epidemic broke out, the cumulative cases have risen to 112, including 28 deaths. Three patients died today,\" Sam Kazinga, Bundibugyo district commissioner, told reporters by telephone.

According to authorities, hundreds of villagers and medics who had physical contact with the patients have been put under observation.

Because no one can explain how the disease entered Bundibugyo - seven years after it killed at least 170 people in northern Uganda - it is now the job of the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) to scour the district for clues.

Virologists are convinced that the disease erupted in September, wending its way through the district unnoticed, even though the first cases arrived in ill-equipped hospitals around the same time.

Spread by bodily fluids, the blood-borne disease was named after a small Congo river where it was discovered in 1976. It re-emerged in Sudan later the same year. Other outbreaks have been recorded in Ivory Coast, Gabon and Uganda. - Sapa-AFP