KAMPALA (AFP) — The Ebola outbreak that has killed 18 people in western Uganda appears to be spreading, officials said Sunday, as authorities examined a sample taken from a patient who died in the south of the country.
Government officials told AFP that the disease, which flared in September, had spread to three new zones in the poor Bundibugyo district near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where it killed 26 recently.
Virologists were meanwhile examining a sample taken from a suspected victim who died overnight in Mbarara region, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south-east of the affected district, said Sam Zaramba, the director of medical services.
Health officials said several dozen medics and support staff had fled the Bundibugyo area when their co-workers became infected with the virus in an outbreak that has already killed 18 people and infected 61 others.
But Ambrose Amumpe, a local adminstrator, spoke of a higher death toll, telling AFP: "We started seeing strange illnesses and deaths in the first week of Novemeber. We suspect that up to 30 have died."
Virologists were also investigating an isolated patient in the neighbouring Port Portale district as well as the fatality in Mbarara, near Rwanda which has boosted border surveillance.
"There are fears that the disease has spread," said a top health ministry official, who requested anonymity.
"We are waiting for the results from the samples," he said of the two cases that have spread panic in the east African nation, where an ebola outbreak killed at least 170 people in 2000.
Meanwhile, a doctor who contracted the virus while treating others in Bundibugyo was under observation in the capital's main Mulago hospital, colleagues said.
A team from the Atlanta-based Centres for Disease Control (CDC) is expected in Uganda on Tuesday with equipment to help contain the disease and further the studies on the mystifying virus, the health ministry announced.
The disease, which is fatal in 90 percent of cases, is spread by contact of body fluids, primarily contamination of blood.
Previous Ebola fatalities among medical workers have been blamed on poor sanitation and hygiene in health centres not equipped with protective suits, respirator masks, latex gloves and other necessary safety gear.
Meanwhile, epidemiologists and virologists are in Bundibugyo district to try to trace backwards the source of the virus as part of a campaign to avoid future outbreaks.
"A health ministry team is going round villages educating the public on mode of transmission," Kizanga explained.
Authorities say the outbreak was an unknown strain after analysis was done on tissue samples at the CDC laboratories.
Known Ebola subtypes usually attack capillaries and blood vessel linings, draining the body of blood through openings, leaving the patient to die in shock, doctors say.
But the new Uganda subtype, which provokes high fever, kills victims without much loss of blood.
Generally, patients of all Ebola strains complain of headaches, abdominal pains, fevers, hiccups and bleeding from all body openings and many patients get deranged before they die, doctors say.
The Ebola virus has remained rare and mystifying since it was first discovered in the DRC and Sudan in 1976 and other outbreaks have since hit Ivory Coast and Gabon.
Experts have said the disease, which strikes with an initial ferocity but fades away in months, is usually containable because it kills its victims faster that it can spread to new ones.
Luckly, the virulence of the disease slashes its chances of multiplying and spreading further, they say.
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