Nine cases of Sudan haemorrhagic fever, a variant of Ebola, have been confirmed in Uganda, AFP reports. As the country's official representative for the Ministry of Health, Diana Atwine, told the agency, all patients had contact with a nurse at the capital's Mulago National Referral Hospital, who became the first registered case and the first victim of the outbreak. A total of 265 contacts (previously 45 were reported) have been identified and placed in isolation for observation in the capital Kampala and the city of Mbale in the east of the country.
The current outbreak has prompted the World Health Organization to begin emergency clinical trials of a candidate vaccine against the Sudan virus. Unlike the closely related Zaire virus, there are no vaccines with proven effectiveness against this pathogen.
