Uganda on 11th January 2023 declared the end of the Ebola disease outbreak caused by Sudan ebolavirus, less than four months after the first case was confirmed in the country’s central Mubende district on 20 September 2022.
- Sudan ebolavirus is one of six species of the Ebola virus against which no therapeutics and vaccines have been approved yet.
About Ebola virus disease (EVD)
- Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness affecting humans and other primates.
- The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals (such as fruit bats, porcupines and non-human primates) and then spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.
- EVD first appeared in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks, one in what is now Nzara, South Sudan, and the other in Yambuku, DRC. The latter occurred in a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name.
- The 2014–2016 outbreak in West Africa was the largest and most complex Ebola outbreak since the virus was first discovered in 1976.
- It is thought that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are natural Ebola virus hosts.
