Casualties of the Ebola Bundibugyo virus outbreak in Africa continue to mount, with a total of at least 1,354 infections and 401 deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda, as investigators track potential spread to new DRC provinces and Uganda confirms a Marburg infection in a child who died of the virus. Like Ebola, the closely related Marburg virus causes a hemorrhagic fever.
The new totals come after the addition of 26 cases and 22 deaths yesterday in the eastern DRC provinces of Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu. Now health authorities are tracing people who may have been exposed to the virus in the previously unaffected neighboring provinces of Tshopo and Haut-Uele.
In the Tshopo case, officials are looking for people who have been exposed to the body of a pregnant woman who died of Ebola in Ituri on June 27 and was transported roughly 186 miles by motorcycle to the city of Kisangani in Tshopo. The journey was undertaken before the woman was known to have had Ebola.
Authorities have apprehended two contacts of Ebola patients who had been isolated for testing in Ituri and had fled to Haut-Uele province, which also borders South Sudan and the Central African Republic. One of the two contacts tested positive for Ebola, while the other was awaiting a confirmatory test. They were returned to Ituri while healthcare teams trace anyone they may have encountered in Haut-Uele.
No additional Marburg cases in Uganda
While no Ebola infections have been confirmed in South Sudan, humanitarian groups are working to shore up health-system preparedness because of the country’s transient populations and permeable borders with the DRC.
Today, a Relief Web report said that the International Medical Corps is supporting 80 facilities in which workers have conducted more than 53,200 screenings and treated 314 patients, including 110 with confirmed Ebola.
Both the DRC and Uganda declared the outbreak on May 15, but it is believed to have begun much earlier.
Today, Ugandan health officials confirmed a single case of Marburg in a 1.5-year-old child who died of the virus in Kyegegwa district in the western part of the country, Reuters reports. No contacts of the child have experienced symptoms, and no other cases have been identified. As is true for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola virus, there is no vaccine to prevent Marburg infection.
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