Uganda will on Thursday discharge its last remaining Ebola patient from the isolation unit at Mulago National Referral Hospital, marking a major milestone in the country’s efforts to contain the Ebola disease outbreak.
With the discharge of the final patient, Uganda will begin the 42-day countdown required by the World Health Organisation (WHO) before an Ebola outbreak can officially be declared over. Under WHO guidelines, a country is declared Ebola-free if no new confirmed cases are recorded for 42 consecutive days after the last patient tests negative and is discharged.
The Ministry of Health announced the development this evening through Senior Communication Officer Emmanuel Ainebyoona, who also invited the media to witness the discharge ceremony at Mulago Isolation Centre.
Uganda has recorded 20 confirmed Ebola cases and two confirmed deaths during the current outbreak. One probable case and one probable death have also been reported. The last confirmed case was registered on June 21 and was linked to travel from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Health authorities have maintained that all confirmed cases in Uganda were detected in Kampala, with no evidence of sustained community transmission. The outbreak is part of a larger regional epidemic caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a species of the Ebola virus, which continues to spread in the eastern provinces of the DRC.
As of July 13, the DRC had reported 2,011 confirmed cases and 754 confirmed deaths, making it the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record. The outbreak surpassed 1,000 confirmed cases within just 40 days of response activation, far faster than the country’s 2018 North Kivu outbreak, which took about 235 days to reach the same milestone. More than 100 deaths were reported during the first week of July alone.
Uganda’s swift containment of the outbreak has drawn praise from public health experts, who commended the country’s experience in managing repeated Ebola outbreaks through rapid surveillance, contact tracing, laboratory testing, case isolation and community engagement.
Allan Kasujja, the head of the Uganda Media Centre, described the development as another proof of Uganda’s public health capacity, noting that once the last patient is discharged, the country will officially begin the countdown to being declared Ebola-free.
“Epidemics come to die in Uganda,” Kasujja wrote on social media. “We have the expertise. We have the most public health aware citizens in the world.” If no new Ebola cases are confirmed over the next 42 days, Uganda will officially be declared free of the current Ebola outbreak by the World Health Organisation-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
