Uganda Says Free of Ebola-Like Marburg After Outbreak in September

Ugandan authorities said the east African country was free of Marburg, a virus similar to Ebola, after no new cases had been reported more than a month after a hospital worker died of the disease in the capital.

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KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan authorities said the east African country was free of Marburg, a virus similar to Ebola, after no new cases had been reported more than a month after a hospital worker died of the disease in the capital.

Transmitted through bodily fluids or by handling infected wild animals, Marburg starts with a severe headache followed by hemorrhaging and kills in 80 percent or more cases within about a week. There is no vaccine or specific treatment for the virus.

A total of 197 people were in contact with the healthcare worker, but none of them were found to have been infected, junior health minister Sarah Opendi told a news conference.

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Opendi said 42 days was the minimum period of monitoring before an outbreak is declared contained, and there had been no new cases reported since the death in Kampala on Sept. 28.

"This implies that the Marburg outbreak in the country has been completely controlled," she said.

The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed nearly 5,000 people - all but a handful in West Africa's Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - since March.

(Reporting Elias Biryabarema; Editing by James Macharia and Louise Ireland)

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