While there are currently no positive cases, the outbreak declared on January 30th is not yet over as Aceng says they still have over a hundred contacts who have not yet completed their 21 days of follow-up. The Ministry had listed 265 contacts who were put under quarantine at various facilities in Jinja, Kampala and Mbale districts but ninety-one had completed their 21 days from exposure to a positive case on Monday.
The Ministry
of Health has discharged all eight patients who had tested positive for
Ebola. The patients were in contact with the health worker who succumbed to the viral hemorrhagic
fever last month.
While being discharged on Tuesday, Ezra
Byegarazo a Clinical Officer at Saidina Abubakar Islamic Hospital who was
attending to the deceased index case said he didn’t test positive for the virus
until eleven days later. He also
revealed that they had been told they would be followed up for one
year but worried that this exercise may turn into coercion especially if follow-up teams fail to appreciate that the majority are
employed and may not always avail themselves as needed.
//Cue in:” The
follow-up…
Cue out: … as
a coercion”. //
Byegarazo
was speaking shortly after Health Minister Dr Jane Ruth Aceng declared that the
country currently has no active case of the Ebola Sudan disease as all the
seven that had been admitted at Mulago National Referral and one case that was
in Mbale hospital had been discharged.
//Cue in:”
Nine cases have …
Cue out: …
for 21 days”. //
Aceng added
that while there are no positive cases, the outbreak declared on January 30th
is not yet over as they still have over a hundred contacts who have not yet
completed their 21 days of follow-up. The Ministry had listed 265 contacts who
were put under quarantine at various facilities in Jinja, Kampala and Mbale
districts but ninety-one had completed their 21 days from exposure to a
positive case on Monday.
Meanwhile, when
asked whether experts had finally established what the source of the current outbreak
was, Col Dr Henry Kyobe, the Incident Commander said that they had not yet found concrete
evidence but added that the index case was most likely infected from the
Kampala Metropolitan areas as he had been to Kampala and Wakiso districts only
in the period of exposure.
