Uganda: Gov’t to declare Uganda Ebola-free on Wednesday

(SomaliNet) The Ugandan government is preparing to officially declare the country Ebola-free on Wednesday.

Ebola outbreak killed 37 people, infecting many more and led to a near-total shutdown of the economy in western Uganda.

The announcement is expected to signal a sigh of relief from officials who feared the highly infectious disease would spread beyond the Bundibugyo region where it started among people living on the hills of the Rwenzori Mountains.

\"So many people have been affected, it is important to be able to say the epidemic is over,\" Dr. Sam Zaramba, director general of health services at the Ministry of Health said yesterday. \"We will go to Bundibugyo to have a celebration [on the 20th].\"

Dr Zaramba explained that the date was chosen because it will mark 42 days since the release of the last confirmed Ebola case. Ebola can surface up to 21 days after being contracted.

The medical community generally doubles that period before officially declaring the end of an Ebola outbreak.

To mark the occasion, Daily Monitor, beginning today, revisits the outbreak through a series of articles that explore how the disease spread, the government and humanitarian agency response and profile those who are today struggling to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of a disease notorious for leaving few survivors in its wake.

The series begin with a look at the outbreak\'s epicentre. It is here, at a modest health centre with little more than a 10-bed maternity ward, that patients with a mysterious illness began arriving in clusters during the last week of August, some three months before the health workers knew they were handling Ebola.

How Ebola broke out

Kikyo Health Centre IV lies in a picturesque setting surrounded by mountains. It is about a 40-minute drive from Bundibugyo town along a winding dirt road so narrow that vehicles pass one another with inches to spare before the road drops off to the valley below.

\"In August, we began noticing some unusual deaths,\" said Mr Julius Monday, the in-charge officer at the health centre. \"People were coming in with diarrhea, high fever. None of them tested positive for cholera or malaria so we were not sure what to make of it.\"

Mr Monday and his colleagues continued to treat the patients, most of whom came from the nearby Kikyo Trading Centre. In all, 91 of the region\'s 149 registered Ebola cases passed through the doors of the health centre.

Officials, including Mr Monday, believe the outbreak can be traced back to a family in Kikyo that ate monkey meat. In all, 16 of the 17 family members who ate the meat reportedly got sick and five died.

Inside Mr Monday¹s office, a large sheet of paper on the wall tracks, week by week, the reported cases of medical conditions common here: rabies, dysentery, guinea worm, malaria, measles, meningitis and, now, in big block black letters at the end of the list, \'EBOLA\'.

This health centre, with its small staff and 10 beds, handles as many as 850 malaria cases each month. Its staff is used to treating serious medical conditions with limited resources, but the Ebola outbreak overwhelmed the centre because it had inadequate protective gear.

According to Mr. Monday, it was not until a team of Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation investigators arrived in early October that supplies were brought to the health centre at a time when Mr Monday had previously been told the outbreak was intestinal worms.

By that time, the health centre had 20 patients suffering from the mysterious disease. It was those 20 whose blood samples, taken in mid-October, later tested positive for Ebola.

In all, six staff at the health centre (five health workers and one cleaner) contracted Ebola. One, a nurse named Johnson Kiiza, died.

Another nurse, Isaac Kiiza, was the first health worker to get sick. \"I used him to collect stool samples from the patients when I thought it was cholera,\" Mr Monday said.

Isaac Kiiza began having symptoms on October 13. Two weeks later, the nurse who attended to him, Johnson Kiiza, also became sick.

Johnson Kiiza died on November 3. \"We did not have any gloves but you cannot stop patient services,\" said Isaac Kiiza, now among the Ebola survivors. He was back at work two days after being released from hospital.

Finally, government officials announced the Ebola outbreak on November 29 and teams of humanitarian workers set up isolation tents. Kikyo\'s last Ebola case was discharged on January 4, but not before 25 Ebola victims died at the health centre.

\"A lot of people died here,\" Mr Monday said recently as he walked across the now-empty grounds where the isolation tents had been erected. –Daily Monitor