KAMPALA, Oct 4, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - The death toll from an Ebola outbreak in 
Uganda has risen to nine, the health ministry said Friday, two weeks after 
the authorities announced an epidemic in the centre of the country.

The new toll rose from seven, the figure given on Friday.

Last month the health ministry announced the landlocked nation's first 
fatality from the highly contagious virus since 2019, declaring an outbreak 
in the central district of Mubende.

Ebola is an often-fatal viral haemorrhagic fever named after a river in 
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where it was discovered in 1976.

Human transmission is through bodily fluids, with the main symptoms being 
fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhoea.

Outbreaks are difficult to contain, especially in urban environments.

The health ministry tweeted on Monday that the total number of Ebola cases 
identified in the country stood at 43, with nearly 900 contact cases 
identified.

Last week President Yoweri Museveni ruled out imposing a lockdown to contain 
the virus, saying that "government has capacity to control this outbreak as 
we have done before".

People who are infected do not become contagious until symptoms appear, which 
is after an incubation period of between two and 21 days.

At present there is no licensed medication to prevent or treat Ebola, 
although a range of experimental drugs are in development.

Uganda, which shares a porous border with the DRC, has experienced several 
Ebola outbreaks, most recently in 2019 when at least five people died.

Last week the DRC declared an end to an Ebola virus outbreak that emerged in 
eastern North Kivu province six weeks ago.

Only one case of the virus had been confirmed, according to the World Health 
Organization, making the DRC's Ebola outbreak its "least catastrophic".

The worst epidemic in West Africa between 2013 and 2016 killed more than 
11,300 alone. The DRC has had more than a dozen epidemics, the deadliest 
killing 2,280 people in 2020.