Ebola kills doctor in Uganda

“I regret to announce that we have lost our first doctor, Dr. Mohammed Ali, a Tanzanian national, 37-year-old Male,” the health minister, Jane Ruth Aceng, tweeted.

She said Ali had tested positive for Ebola on Sept. 26 and died while receiving treatment at a hospital in Fort Portal, a town about 300 kilometres west of the capital Kampala.

Authorities in the east African nation announced the outbreak of the “deadly hemorrhagic fever” on Sept. 20 triggering fears of a major health crisis in the country of 45 million people.

There is no vaccine for the Sudan strain of the disease behind the latest Uganda infections.

The health ministry said on Friday, before Ali’s death, that the disease had so far infected 35 people and killed seven.

Ali was among six health workers who include doctors, an anaesthesiologist and one medical student who have contracted the disease.

Ebola mainly spreads through ‘contact with the bodily fluids’ of an infected person. The viral disease has symptoms including intense weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat, vomiting, diarrhoea and rashes among others.

Reuters /Shakirat Sadiq