The World Health Organization has mobilized top health experts and staff in Uganda after a case of Sudan haemorrhagic fever (SHF), a closely related disease with similar symptoms to Ebola, was confirmed in the country’s densely populated capital, Kampala. The only confirmed case so far was a nurse at Mulago National Referral Hospital, the country’s largest. So far, 45 contacts have been identified and are being monitored. The country had a previous outbreak in 2022.
Just before this, an Ebola outbreak was suspected in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a region far from Uganda, with 12 cases and eight deaths. Meanwhile, in Tanzania, which borders Uganda to the south, an outbreak of Marburg fever continues. In neighboring Rwanda, an outbreak of the same infection ended in December 2024.