Masaka City has registered its first suspected Ebola Virus Disease, EVD case. The patient has been admitted to an isolation ward at Masaka Regional Referral Hospital.
According to Doctor Edwin Okello the in-charge of the Epidemiology Ward, the male patient reported to the hospital emergency ward on Monday while seeking treatment.
He indicates that the suspect, who presented with rare symptoms that include very high fever and dizziness, got unconscious moments after he was admitted to the hospital's emergency ward.
Moments after he responded to medication, Dr. Okello says that the suspect revealed to the health worker that he had fled from Mubende Regional Referral Hospital where he had been asked to undergo close monitoring after he was identified as a contact to one of the confirmed Ebola cases registered in the area.
According to Dr. Okello, the suspect intimated to the health workers that he fled Mubende Hospital together with two more other people who were also supposed to undergo monitoring as suspected cases.
These are said to have boarded a taxi that plies the Mubende-Sembabule-Masaka road and the other two went to unknown destinations when they reached Masaka town.
Dr. Okello says they have taken samples from the suspect and have forwarded them to the Uganda Virus Research Institute in Entebbe for further analysis.
He also reveals that the hospital is also waiting for results from samples taken from five more suspects who were earlier admitted to their isolation ward. “We now call upon the communities to be extra vigilant and report any unusual symptoms to the health authorities such that our teams can respond to them.
Meanwhile, there is fear in Kagadi after a 23-year-old man died on Tuesday. The victim died from St. Ambrose Charity Health Center IV in Kagadi where he had been admitted.
Keefa Madira, the senior Clinical officer at Kagadi Hospital who doubles as the head of Ebola case management in Kagadi said that the deceased has been a Health Care Worker attached to one of the private clinics in Kakumiro district.
According to Madira, the deceased traveled to Mubende district and returned to Rugashali town council in Kagadi. He says the deceased was bleeding from the mouth and nose, had a high fever, severe headache, muscle and joint pain, diarrhea, and vomiting.
Madira says that the blood samples were taken to Uganda Virus Research Institute in Entebbe.
According to the Ministry of Health, Uganda has an overall Ebola death toll of 23 while the cumulative cases stand at 36, including confirmed probable cases, that have been recorded the outbreak of the viral hemorrhagic fever was declared in Mubende district on September 20th.
According to the World Health Organization-WHO, the Ebola hemorrhagic fever has an incubation period of between two to 21 days within which the virus can manifest in a person who got contact.