Ugandan districts go into lockdown to prevent spread of ebola

Ugandan authorities have imposed Covid-like restrictions to try and control an Ebola outbreak.

People who live in the central districts of Mubende and Kassanda cannot travel out of those areas.

All entertainment venues, including bars and places of worship, have been closed.

Burials must now be supervised by health officials and a night-time curfew has been imposed.

The restrictions will last at least 21 days.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni stressed the measures were ‘temporary’.

Ebola has infected 58 people in the East African country since September 20, when authorities declared an outbreak.

At least 19 people have died, including four health workers.

Ugandan authorities were not quick in detecting the outbreak, which began infecting people in a farming community in August.

At the time local authorities were describing it as a ‘strange illness’.

More than 1,100 contacts of known Ebola patients have been traced by authorities, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Sudan strain of the disease, for which there is no proven vaccine, is circulating in the country of 45 million people.

Ebola, which manifests as a viral haemorrhagic fever, can be difficult to detect because fever is also a symptom of malaria.

It is spread through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials.

Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Ebola first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River after which the disease is named.

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