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An Ebola alert in Kenya proved to be a false alarm on Monday. But the country remains alert after the Ebola deaths of two Ugandans who visited the DRC last week. Tanzanian officials have warned that the virus could infiltrate Dar es Salaam.
"A single case of Ebola is an epidemic and containing it is very important," said Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, representative of the World Health Organization in Uganda.
The World Health Organization said on Friday that the epidemic did not warrant yet to be declared a global emergency, while insisting that the situation was nonetheless serious.
"We have been preparing for this for the past 10 months, which does not diminish the seriousness, whether in one or two countries," Woldemariam told RFI.
The Ebola virus pbaded from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Uganda last week, killing at least two people.
Uganda has already had five outbreaks of Ebola, all indigenous.
This sixth outbreak is the first case of cross-border infection. This was provoked after a Congolese woman and her family went to the DRC to take care of her dying father, then returned to Uganda.
The five-year-old's son and his 50-year-old mother have died. The boy's three-year-old brother is also infected and several members of his family are isolated.
Porous borders
Mbad rallies, including market days and prayers, have since been canceled. Kampala has maintained its border with the open DRC.
"Uganda is a very open society, it allows its neighbors to travel here and it is common to have relatives on the other side of the border," Woldemariam said.
Screening has been intensified at border points, where those arriving are asked to wash their hands with chlorinated water or to take their temperature.
However, the Red Cross has warned that people continue to enter the country via return roads instead of going through official checkpoints.
"We have invested in what we call a community-based surveillance system that informs village health teams and strengthens their ability to identify the signs and symptoms of Ebola," says Woldemariam.
"In the last 10 months, Uganda has tested six times more people with Ebola than every year," he added.
Efforts to contain the spread have been more difficult in neighboring DRC, because of militia violence and suspicion of foreign medical badistance.
"Do not panic"
"In Uganda, we use local health professionals, so we do not come from outside to try to solve problems, it is the local system that tackles this problem. , so that local ownership exists, "said Woldemariam.
In the past, the World Health Organization had been sharply criticized for its sluggishness during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which had claimed 11 lives. 300 people.
Woldemariam believes that the disease can be contained if it is managed properly.
"People should be worried but not panicked.If they know the signs and symptoms, [cough, fever, vomiting] if they wash their hands, they stay away from a sick person; or if, by chance, they touch that person, they must immediately wash their hands. "
Woldemariam says the basic message is very simple: although it is a scary disease, the Ebola virus is controllable and can be defeated.
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