On September 24, 2022, members of the Ugandan Medical Staff of the Ebola Treatment Unit stand inside the Personal Protective Equipment PPE at the Mubende Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda. BADRU KATUMBA AFP KAMPALA Uganda has experienced a drop in the number of new Ebola cases, with some districts going for at least two weeks without registering new infections, health ministry officials said.
The East African country is having a measure of success in its efforts to combat the outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic fever more than two months after it was declared.
Central Uganda's Mubende district was where the outbreak was originally declared on September 20. It and another district, Kassanda, are considered to be the epicenters of the disease's spread. The movement in and out of them has been restricted.
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Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng said on Wednesday that there were no new cases in the two districts over many days that we are seeing a downward trend in the number of cases.
She said that we were not seeing new cases in Kampala, in the greater Kampala metropolitan area, and we are not seeing cases in Masaka and Jinja, two other cities.
Health Ministry spokeswoman Emmanuel Ainebyoona told Reuters on Thursday that Mubende had gone without a new case for at least 16 days and that Kampala, the capital, had not recorded new infections for at least two weeks.
The Sudan strain of Ebola is circulating in Uganda, which has no proven vaccine unlike the more common Zaire strain that has been spread during recent outbreaks in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
Three candidate vaccines against the Sudan strain are planned for clinical trial in Uganda.
The country has recorded 141 cases and 55 deaths so far, according to the ministry.