NAIROBI: Uganda’s health minister declared the country Ebola-free on Tuesday following the East African nation’s latest outbreak of the viral hemorrhagic disease that infected 20 people and killed two of them.
Uganda has suffered multiple outbreaks of Ebola since 2000, when it recorded its first epidemic, and officials say over the years the country gained expertise it has used to bring recent infections under control quickly with limited community spread. Fifteen people in the latest outbreak, declared in mid-May, were infected in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo — the epicenter of the epidemic, where the number of confirmed cases now stands at more than 3,000.
The last Ebola patient in Uganda, a Congolese national, was discharged on June 22. That is short of the 42-day waiting period required by the World Health Organization to declare the end of an outbreak.
But Health Minister Chris Baryomunsi said the announcement follows the “successful completion of the mandatory 42-day monitoring period which begun after the discharge of the last Ugandan national, a locally transmitted patient, on the 16 of June, 2026.”
Of the 20 confirmed cases during the outbreak, 18 were discharged while two died from the virus, both of whom were from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
