Kampala, Uganda
Monday March 03, 2025

A four-and-a-half-year-old child has died of Ebola virus infection in Uganda, which has been facing a new epidemic since the end of January, the Ministry of Health announced on Saturday.

At the beginning of February, the East African country had confirmed nine cases of the Ebola-Sudan strain of the virus, including that of a nurse who died at the end of January.

On February 19, the authorities assured the public that the epidemic was “contained”, following the reported recovery of the eight patients who had contracted the often fatal hemorrhagic fever.

But on Saturday, the Ministry of Health said in a statement that it had registered an additional positive case, detected at Mulago, the national referral hospital in the capital Kampala.

“The case identified is that of a four-and-a-half-year-old child”, who ‘died of a classic presentation of Ebola’, the text added. The victim, a resident of Kampala, is “linked to the primary group”, it adds.

As of February 25, 2025, ten cases had been confirmed positive for Ebola in Uganda, according to the ministry.

A total of 265 contacts had been placed in isolation last week in hospitals in Kampala and Mbale, a town in the east of the country.

This is the sixth time Uganda has been hit by this viral hemorrhagic fever, which presents six different strains, three of which (Bundibugyo, Sudan, Zaire) have already caused major epidemics.

There is currently no vaccine against Ebola-Sudan.

However, a vaccine trial against this strain began in early February in Uganda, “in record time” according to the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Human transmission of Ebola is via bodily fluids, with the main symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhoea. Infected people become contagious only after the onset of symptoms, after an incubation period ranging from 2 to 21 days.

All strains combined, this virus has caused over 15,000 deaths in Africa since 1976.

Humaniterre with AFP