Kitgum, Sudan on Ebola Alert

May 9, 2003
Oketch Bitek & Carolyne Nakazibwe, Kampala

The Ebola haemorrhagic fever is feared to have broken out in southern Sudan killing about 45 people in the last two weeks.

Kitgum District Chairman Nahaman Ojwee told journalists during a peace seminar in Awech, Gulu, yesterday that the disease has claimed lives at the foot of the Imatong Hills, close to Agoro at the Uganda-Sudan border.

Imatong Hills were at one time occupied by the Lord's Resistance Army rebels led by Mr Joseph Kony.

Uganda has since last year deployed troops in southern Sudan, under the code-name Operation Iron Fist, to drive the rebels out of their hideouts.

"Forty-five people have died of Ebola in southern Sudan," Mr Ojwee said. "It is the latest outbreak and it has caused much panic in Kitgum district."

The World Health Organisation Country Representative Oladapo Walker, however, said no definite Ebola diagnosis had been made and WHO contacts were still studying the situation.

"It is not true that 45 people have died. There is a fever-like illness in which several people have died. Wait for a definite diagnosis," Dr Walker said last evening. He said Malaria can also cause bleeding sometimes, and put the number of the dead at seven.

Sources in Gulu said unspecified numbers of Ebola patients have been admitted to

Ikotos and Torit health centres in Sudan.

By Wednesday evening, nine Sudanese had been admitted to Torit, according to Dr Alex Olwedo, the Kitgum district director of health services, who added that he has been in touch with his counterpart the other side of the border.

Mr Ojwee said movement along the common border has been restricted to avoid a spill over into Uganda. Officials said the district has been put on red alert.

Mr Ojwee said district officials have reported the matter to the Ministry of Health, although the Assistant Commissioner Health Services Dr Alex Opio said he had no reports on the issue yet.

However, he later said that Uganda is on the alert at the border, but declined to comment about the epidemic in Sudan.

UPDF 4 Division Spokesman Lt. Paddy Ankunda said: "Our forces are in a safe zone with medical practitioners to curtail the outbreak."

Uganda suffered an Ebola outbreak in 2000, affecting about 400 people in Gulu, Masindi and Mbarara districts, and killing 173 of them.

Sudan was hit by Ebola in 1976 and 1979, with a strain said to be more virulent and with a fatality rate of up to 80 percent.

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