Mysterious disease in Uganda: 38 dead in one month

Written by Sandeep Nehra

The Ugandan authorities with international experts trying to identify a mysterious disease that has killed 38 people in northern Uganda for nearly a month, said on Wednesday a government official.

This unknown disease was detected from 10 November in several districts of northern Uganda, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health.

Of local and international media have mentioned a possible resurgence of an epidemic of bubonic plague, whose cases had been reported for the last in 2008 in the country.

However, according to a ministry official in charge of epidemiology and who requested anonymity, the disease has not yet been identified and evidence gathered to date do not confirm the thesis of the bubonic plague. “The results we have received from Fort Collins (a specialized laboratory in the U.S.) are negative for the bubonic plague,” said the official told AFP Wednesday. “If it was a form of plague, we would have already identified. We have never seen such a disease so far,” said the epidemiologist.

All previously identified cases of plague in the country were located in the region of West Nile in the far north-west, although further west than the area affected by the current epidemic.

“The plague victims were mostly women and children. All deaths recorded this time were male adults,” the source added.

American experts from the U.S. Center for Prevention and Disease Control (CDC Centre for Disease Control) are currently trying to identify the disease.

Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO), based in Congo, were also sent to Uganda. “We do not have enough information to identify the disease, but we are working round the clock,” assured the source said. Some 91 cases have so far been identified: the victims suffer from severe headaches, fever, dizziness, diarrhea and vomiting, according to the Ministry of Health.

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