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East Africa to Discuss Ways against Deadly Ebola Spread
The East African Community (EAC) member states, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, would hold a two-day urgent meeting of health experts next week to try to find ways to check the spreading of deadly Ebola disease which is running rampant in Uganda.
Dr Nyamajeje Weggoro, a senior EAC official, has said that senior health officials and relevant departments of the three countries would chart out a common strategy in Arusha, northern Tanzania where the EAC Secretariat sits.
"The main thrust is to assess the spread of Ebola in the region and possible sources of the disease," he told media on Friday.
Dr Nyamajeje Weggoro said that the experts would discuss how to mobilize local and foreign resources to contain the disease and try to stop and remove the threat of spreading from Uganda to neighboring Tanzania and Kenya.
Ebola, reportedly worse than the HIV/AIDS, has already killed 120 out of 340 people confirmed to have contracted the deadly virus in Gulu, northern Uganda over the past three months.
Tanzanian health authorities reported this week five suspected cases in the Mwanza and Kagera regions which are close to Uganda as well as in Dar es Salaam with symptoms of the killer disease, but said that there "was not conclusive evidence to confirm Ebola. "
Mariam Mwaffisi, the Permanent Secretary in the Health Ministry said that two of the patients, one in Kagera and the other in Mwanza, died on November 14 and 17 respectively.
Laboratory results of samples of a suspected Ebola victim arrived Friday at the Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam from South Africa, but authorities declined to say whether they were positive or negative.
The World Health Organization says that before the current outbreak, Ebola fever claimed 793 lives in early 1,100 documented cases since it was first discovered in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
However, the exact origin of the virus and how and why it flares up are unknown.
Ebola, a rapidly spreading disease which can kill within 24 hours, spreads through human contact and leads to sudden onset of fever, weakness, headache, muscle pains and abdominal pains followed by vomiting, diarrhea and massive internal and external bleeding through all body openings.
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