Experts mobilize against Ebola

Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) treated patients, virologists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control set up a high-tech laboratory, logisticians from Doctors Without Borders established supply lines and Ugandan volunteers went hut to hut on Friday checking for new patients and teaching people about the dangers of Ebola, a type of hemorraghic fever.

The World Food Program delivered food for the patients at the hospitals on Friday. Traditionally, relatives help care for patients and feed them, but the chance of a relative spreading the disease was too high to allow the practice to continue, Jennifer Abrahamson, an agency spokeswoman said.

Dr. Guenael Rodier, the head of the WHO team and a veteran of a half dozen past Ebola outbreaks, said he was confident that area hospitals were now safe and that most people in the community were aware of the disease, which has never struck in Uganda before.

“The vast majority of the cases are in the hospital today,” Rodier said. “Now we have much less transmission than we did two weeks ago, but we (still) have many cases coming in from previous exposure.”

Rodier said that it will take an incubation period, about 10 days, before the number of new cases begins to shrink as a result of the measures taken this week.

While dozens of foreigners brought their expertise to northern Gulu, 225 miles (362 kilometers) north of Kampala, hundreds of beleaguered Ugandan health workers still carried most of the load. The first Ebola case was admitted to hospital almost a month ago, but the outbreak of Ebola was only confirmed Oct. 14.

Ebola is the latest crisis to hit Gulu, where the rainy season has brought an explosion of flowering trees and bushes, making the impoverished town look like a tropical paradise.

For 13 years, Lord’s Resistance Army rebels have been fighting the government around the town, which is home to a large military base, for control of the fertile farmland.

Pierre Rollin, the head of the CDC team, said the virus had been identified as the Sudan strain of Ebola, one of three strains of the virus, that was last detected near the Ebola river in Sudan in 1979. The identification, which was confirmed by WHO on Friday, reinforced suspicions that the virus may have been inadvertently introduced to Uganda by the rebels who have bases in southern Sudan.

Uganda also has one of the highest HIV rates in the world, but an aggressive health campaign has reduced the number of new infections dramatically. Authorities have started using the same methods to educate people about Ebola.

On a local radio station, a Swahili broadcaster passionately explains everything that is known about Ebola, urging people to send for help if they know someone who may have a disease.

“If we do not defeat this, we are finished,” the presenter says, breaking into English, Uganda’s official language.

Ebola can take up to two weeks to incubate in a new victim and during this period, the patient is not contagious. But once the first flu-like symptoms develop, the patient can transmit the virus through bodily contact.

In the later stages, the victim begins bleeding internally, producing vomit and diarrhea mixed with blood, and eventually bleeding from all orifices. At this point, and for a short time after death, the patient is most contagious.

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