Ebola patient allegedly diagnosed in Kagera

As the government tries to take measures to prevent the deadly disease of Ebola from spreading into the country, one patient has been discovered to have been infected with the viruses at Nyakage hospital in Karagwe district, Kagera region.

According to one doctor from the hospital who declined to be named because he is not the authorised spokesperson, doctors at the hospital discovered a patient whose name was not immediately established with all signs of the disease when he went there for treatment on Friday.

The doctor further noted that the patient had travelled from Uganda and had entered into the country via Mulongo border in the western part of Kagera region.

Efforts to contact the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Hussein Mwinyi for more clarification about the matter yesterday bore no fruit as he was not ready to speak about the issue, asking the reporter to call him later.

However, when efforts were made to reach him about an hour later his phone was switched off.

However, speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Dr Mwinyi said the government had sent medical experts to the Tanzanian border with Uganda in a quest to contain its spread into the country. The disease is known to have killed 14 victims.

Dr Mwinyi told visibly alarmed legislators that the medical experts who have been dispatched to the border were fully equipped with protective gear, medical supplies and other requisite equipment.

They are also able to identify Ebola virus carriers. The minister advised the public, especially those living in the northern regions of Kagera, Mara, Mwanza and Kigoma, some of which share border crossings with Uganda.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has already alerted Tanzania on the Ebola threat. The ministry issued a statement to the press elaborating that Ebola was a highly contagious disease brought on by the Ebola virus.

As an outbreak of ebola progresses, bodily fluids from diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding represent a hazard. Due to lack of proper equipment and hygienic practices, large-scale epidemics occur mostly in poor, isolated areas without modern hospitals or well-educated medical staff.

The Ebola virus was first associated with an outbreak of 318 cases of a hemorrhagic disease in Zaire. Of the 318 cases, 280 of them died—and died quickly. That same year, 1976, 284 people in Sudan also became infected with the virus and 156 died.

The viruses that cause Ebola and Marburg are similar, infecting both monkeys and people. The outbreaks of these diseases are often self-contained, however, because they kill their hosts so quickly that they rapidly run out of people to infect.

In Kampala, Uganda the residents have been urged to avoid contact after the deadly Ebola virus hit the city. Kampala residents have been urged to avoid contact after the deadly Ebola virus hit the city but security guard Joseph Karuba's job is to frisk people and he doesn't have gloves.

"The thing has come back -- it came first time and we beat it, then it came again and we beat it and now it is back," he said, waiting for shoppers outside one of the teeming capital's malls.

President Yoweri Museveni on Monday confirmed that Ebola, one of the world's most virulent diseases, had reached Kampala for the first time following an outbreak in the west of the country.

"We shall request gloves, but for now it is a very big problem because we are exposed," Karuba said.

Officials were searching for anyone who might have come into contact with the virus, amid public warnings for people to take precautions and avoid physical contact..

Ebola: The fatal costs of a slow response
Friday, August 3 2012 at 01:00

One month after the death of the first Ebola victim at Kagadi Hospital – an infant whose family would lose nine members in all – the country’s hub for containing the deadly virus is still struggling to cope.

“The facilities are not okay,” says Steven Byaruhanga, the chairperson of the district Ebola taskforce. “The incinerators we don’t have… electricity is on and off, the pump for water is not functioning, the sewer system is also broken down, there’s so many problems.”

Patients at the hospital reportedly rioted on Tuesday, protesting the lack of food and clean water, while vehicles provided by the Ministry of Health sat idle for lack of fuel.

“There are so many cases reported but we could not move because there was no fuel,” Byaruhanga said.
“If we could get it, it could make the work so easy.”

No resources

Resources have been coming in piecemeal. According to Byaruhanga, World Vision this week donated 400 litres of fuel to fill in the gap, while Centres for Disease Control and the Red Cross have brought in thousands of protective suits. But as reports of suspected cases continue to increase into the district’s sub counties, a lack of the disposable wear has hindered containment efforts.

“At sub county health centres, we are getting reports that they are shying away from handling patients because they don’t have protective gear,” Byaruhanga said.

As of July 31, the ministry reported two new deaths for a suspected total of 16 people to have died from the fatal Sudan strain, diagnosed by the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) in Entebbe. The ministry said it is following up 176 people in total, to monitor for telltale symptoms of fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, severe blood loss and intense fatigue.

Meanwhile, traumatised health workers are being fast outpaced by what is being asked of them. Though they have been boosted by 100 Red Cross volunteers, MSF, CDC and WHO technical support, local NGOs and even private support, Byaruhanga says morale is low.

“Some of them are demoralised, others are stigmatised because their colleague has passed away,” he said. “They need at least some motivation, like some money to eat lunch.”

The district Ebola taskforce met on July 30, two days after the outbreak was publicly announced by the ministry, and came up with an emergency response plan, which Byaruhanga says asks for more than Shs800m to tackle the outbreak.

According to health ministry permanent secretary Asuman Lukwago, that budget is being considered by cabinet and the national taskforce chaired by Director of Health Services Jane Acheng, who assesses field needs daily.

“We are mobiliing funds,” Lukwago said. “We have money in our budget for emergencies.”

The ministry’s top bureaucrat says the financial year, which began in July, has opened up a Shs2.5b reserve fund which can be fronted by National Medical Stores to stem the crisis.

One outbreak to the next
The last Ebola scare was quickly contained, and the sole confirmed case of a 12-year-old girl dying in Luwero district, only 75km from the capital, did not spread.

When a Kagadi health worker was transferred and died at Mulago Hospital one week before the outbreak was even announced, officials there had no idea that Ebola was even a worry, Byaruhanga said.

But according to the ministry, the seven remaining health workers being observed there under isolation have not presented with any symptoms, and no new cases reported in the capital.

This delay was due in large part to the family’s spiritual beliefs.

“Losing three people in a day, people would think it is something strange and not normal, so they said this was because of the witch doctors,” Byaruhanga said.

“Actually, it blindfolded other research that would have taken place.”..http://www.monitor.co.ug/artsculture...z/-/index.html

“About The Hot Zone”

“The Ebola virus kills nine out of ten of its victims so quickly and gruesomely that even biohazard experts are terrified. It is airborne, it is extremely contagious, and in the winter of 1989, it seemed about to burn through the suburbs of Washington D.C.”

“At Fort Detrick’s USAMRIID, an Army research facility outside the nation’s capital, a SWAT team of soldiers and scientists wearing biohazard space suits was organized to stop the outbreak of the exotic “hot” virus. The grim operation went on in secret for eighteen days, under unprecedented, dangerous conditions.”

“The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story in depth, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their outbreaks in the human race. From a remote African cave hot with Ebola virus, to an airplane over Africa that is carrying a sick passenger who dissolves into a human virus bomb, to the confines of a Biosafety Level 4 military lab where scientists risk their lives studying lethal substances that could kill them quickly and horribly, The Hot Zone describes situations that a few years ago would have been taken for science fiction. As the tropical wildernesses of the world are destroyed, previously unknown viruses that have lived undetected in the rain forest for eons are entering human populations. The appearance of AIDS is part of a larger pattern, and the implications for the future of the human species are terrifying.”

http://www.richardpreston.net/books/hz.html

Doesn’t sound Christian, but I think giving someone with ebola a lethal injection would be merciful.

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