Kagadi outbreak: ministry testing for Zika, yellow fever

The health ministry is examining blood samples of the six persons admitted with a strange disease in Kagadi district to establish whether they have Zika and yellow fever or not.

Prof. Anthony Mbonye, the acting Director General of Health Services in a statement said results of the Zika and Yellow fever tests being carried out at Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI).

The medic said microbiological tests were also being done at the Central Public Health Laboratories, and that they would be released soon.

This was after a family of 12 people from Kisegu village in Kiryanga sub-county, Kagadi district, reportedly slaughtered and ate a pig that had died of unknown causes. Three of the family members reportedly died while the nine were admitted to Kagadi hospital and isolated.

"All the nine cases presented cases of abdominal pain, diarrhoea, general body weakness, vomiting, headache and fever," the director general of health services, Prof. Mbonye noted.

But currently, there are six patients (five males and one female) admitted in the isolation ward at Kagadi hospital, Prof. Mbonye said, adding that the patients were showing improvement.

Prof. Mbonye said the health ministry was working with the Kagadi district health team to monitor, review and manage all cases in isolation.

He said they were also orienting health workers from Kiryanga health centre III and St. Norah Health Centre II on management and referral protocols of suspected cases.

He said tests carried out on the patients' blood specimens for Ebola, Marburg, Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic, Rift Valley Fever and Sosuga viruses came out negative.

The patients' specimens also tested negative to Dengue Fever, Chikungunya and West Nile viruses at the UVRI. "Further testing for anthrax, at the National Animal Disease Diagnostic Epidemiology Centre laboratories showed that the same specimens were negative for anthrax," Prof. Mbonye said.

The health ministry appealed to the public to desist from eating dead animals and report any suspected cases to the nearest health facility as efforts to contain the outbreak continue.

In August 2012, there were cases of an Ebola outbreak in Kibaale district. About 30 people, including five inmates from Kibaale prison were among those admitted at Kagadi hospital with suspected cases of the virus.

There was panic when one of five prisoners receiving treatment for a suspected case of Ebola virus escaped from Kagadi hospital.