After 42 days of no new Ebola cases, Uganda has declared itself Ebola free during an event organised by the Ministry of Health in Mubende on Wednesday 11 January.
While speaking during the event, the Minister of Health, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, said Uganda has successfully controlled the spread of Ebola.
“We have successfully controlled the spread of Ebola in Uganda,” she said during a ceremony to mark the outbreak's end.
Aceng also said this was Uganda's eighth Ebola outbreak since 2000, when the country recorded its first and most deadly Ebola outbreak that killed more than half of the 425 people it infected.
The latest outbreak, according to Ministry of Health, killed 55 of the 143 people infected since September. Six of the fatalities were health workers.
The declaration followed Uganda's completion of 42 days with no active cases, which represents two full incubation periods of the virus.
The disease that broke out in Mubende last year in September spread to other parts of the country, but efforts from the health ministry managed to stop further spread. Besides Mubende, Kassanda, also located in central Uganda, was one of the districts that registered high numbers of infection.
The director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, praised Uganda for its response to the virus.
“Uganda has shown that Ebola can be defeated when the whole system works together, from having an alert system in place, to finding and caring for people affected and their contacts, to gaining the full participation of affected communities in the response,” he said in a statement.
AMREF Health was also recognised as one of the responsers to the disease outbreak for their pivotal role in sensitisation of communities in the fight against Ebola.
Recently, a report by WHO indicated that $80 million (about Shs292,188,191,440) was used to tackle the latest Ebola outbreak in affected districts in Uganda.
The WHO representative in Uganda, Dr. Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, said the funding was earmarked by a number of donors including individual countries and United Nations agencies that made contributions to various initiatives including surveillance, contact tracing, and treatment.
Dr. Tegegn made the remarks during the Ebola virus disease outbreak response accountability forum in Kampala.
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