Eight patients who had been receiving treatment for Ebola in Uganda have fully recovered, the country’s health minister, Jane Ruth Aceng, announced on Wednesday, marking a major step in controlling the outbreak.
“This is a major breakthrough,” Aceng told AFP, confirming that the recovered patients were discharged on Tuesday and Wednesday from a hospital in Kampala.
Uganda had recorded a total of nine cases in this outbreak, including a nurse who died from the disease in the capital in January.
Despite this progress, Aceng stated that 265 individuals remain under quarantine for monitoring after coming into contact with the deceased patient. However, she assured that Ebola’s spread is now contained, crediting Uganda’s robust disease control mechanisms in collaboration with international agencies.
This marks Uganda’s sixth outbreak of the Ebola Sudan species, a strain for which no approved vaccine currently exists. In response, a vaccination trial for this strain was launched earlier this month.
Uganda previously battled an Ebola outbreak between 2022 and 2023, which lasted four months and resulted in 55 deaths.
The deadliest Ebola epidemic occurred in West Africa between 2013 and 2016, claiming more than 11,300 lives, according to WHO estimates.
