An emergency team from the international medical humanitarian
organisation Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is in
Kigadi, in western Uganda’s Kibaale district, to help fight an outbreak of the
Ebola virus. Other MSF teams in Uganda are closely monitoring the situation.
The Ebola outbreak,
confirmed by Ugandan government on 28 July, has killed at least 14 people,
while at least 20 more are thought to be infected.
The MSF team’s priorities
are to identify and care for people who have been infected, as well as all
those who have been in contact with them, and to ensure that emergency medical
services are functioning. They will also work to identify how and where the virus
is spreading, and to isolate people who are infected so as to limit the
transmission of the disease.
“It’s very important to
react quickly to find where the disease is focused and to isolate it as fast as
possible,” says Olimpia de la Rosa, MSF’s emergency coordinator for Uganda
ebola intervention. “It is also essential to take care of the caregivers –
which means supporting and working closely with the Ugandan health teams who
are already struggling to stop the virus spreading.”
Ebola hemorrhagic fever
spreads rapidly through direct contact with infected people or animals, and can
be transmitted through blood, bodily fluids and even contact with clothes worn
by an infected person. It is caused by a virus first identified in 1976 in
Sudan’s Western Equatoria province and in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of
Congo). Stringent infection control measures are crucial to limit the deadly
spread of the virus.
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