The Ethiopian Public Health Institute issued an alert to regional health bureaus and public health institutes to take preventive measures against the outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) spreading in East African countries.
Through a letter the Institute circulated last week, the regional health bureaus and institutes have been given a notice to double down on the border checks and make adequate preparations to control the spread of the virus.
According to a letter the Institute sent last week on September 23, which also obliges the regional bureaus to cooperate with other stakeholders, the deadly virus will kill infected individuals at varying rates of 25, 50, and 90 percent.
Referring to the information from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Institute disclosed that the virus occurred in Uganda, which became the reason for the Institute to issue the alert.
Caused by the Ebola virus, the Ebola disease has been occurring in the rural villages of Sub-Saharan African countries, mostly in West Africa, since its first discovery in 1970s.
In the years between 2014 and 2016, the largest outbreak with 28,000 cases took place in Western African countries involving mostly Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Several other nations in Africa including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also had seen the virus in their territory. Since 2018, the DRC has been experiencing the outbreak of Ebola in different part of the country.
The Eastern Africa Community (EAC), an intergovernmental organization with members of the Great Lakes region countries, has on September 29, 2022, urged the seven member countries to scale up their preparation against the spread of Ebola outbreak in Uganda.
The seven member states of EAC are DRC, republics of Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Tanzania.
Authorities in Uganda had declared the outbreak of Ebola on September 20, 2022. The WHO announced that until September, 25, 2022, about 36 active cases were recorded, among which 18 were confirmed and the remaining probable cases. Including five from the confirmed cases, a total number of 23 deaths were recorded.
The DRC on the other hand announced on September 27, that the 14th Ebola outbreak in the country, which lasted for six weeks, was over, only remaining with one confirmed case currently.
The report from the EAC also disclosed that Uganda’s recent experiences on the outbreak of Ebola are viruses of Sudan and Zaire origin, in 2012 and 2019, respectively.
