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KAMPALA, Uganda – Uganda has begun vaccinating health staff against Ebola in a border district close to the Congo epidemic.
Vaccinations began Wednesday and are part of a broader Ebola prevention plan in a country that has been facing several Ebola outbreaks since 2000.
In recent months, Ebola cases have been confirmed near the heavily trafficked border between Uganda and Congo, where an epidemic in the north-east of the country claimed the lives of 189 people.
The Ebola virus is transmitted through the fluids of infected people.
Anthony Mbonye, professor of health sciences at the Ugandan University of Makerere, said vaccinations were essential for stopping transmission "in a highly endemic area of haemorrhagic fevers".
Ugandan authorities say that bi-weekly market days, during which 10,000 Congolese in Uganda, put the country at risk.
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