Second patient dies of Ebola in Uganda

A 50-year-old woman who tested positive for Ebola in Uganda has died, a health ministry official told AFP Thursday, the second fatality since the virus spread from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

"The deceased has been confirmed as the grandmother of the five-year-old boy who died. Both victims had attended the burial of an Ebola patient in Congo, but returned to Uganda", the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Arrangements are being made to bury the woman in Kasese, a district in western Uganda close to the DRC border, the official added.

The health ministry announced Wednesday that Uganda had recorded three cases of Ebola infection in the first known cross-border spread since an outbreak began in eastern DRC last August.

All three were from a single family that travelled to DRC to care for a relative, who also died of Ebola.

The five-year-old later died and his three-year-old brother and 50-year-old grandmother tested positive for the virus upon returning to Uganda.

The family was quarantined in a hospital in Bwera, in Kasese district. Eight others who had been in contact with them were also being monitored in an isolation ward.

They, and frontline health workers, are due to be vaccinated Friday with a new drug designed to protect them against the virus, the health ministry said.

East Africa has been on high alert since the outbreak was declared in the eastern DRC provinces of North Kivu and Ituri.

More than 2,000 cases have been recorded in DRC - around two-thirds of them fatal.

The World Health Organization will hold an emergency meeting Friday to determine whether to declare the outbreak "a public health emergency of international concern," a major shift in mobilisation against the disease.

Five-year-old boy dies from Ebola in Uganda

A five-year-old boy who tested positive for Ebola in Uganda has died, a health ministry official told AFP Wednesday, in the first spread of a deadly outbreak in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

"The boy who tested positive for Ebola in Kasese yesterday passed on last night in the isolation unit," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"The minister for health (Ruth Aceng) will be briefing the country about the death of the boy and arrangements to bury the body."

The official said the child was likely to be buried Wednesday.

Uganda's health ministry on Tuesday said that the mother of the child was a Congolese citizen married to a Ugandan.

She had travelled with the child and four other family members back home to nurse her father who eventually died from Ebola.

Uganda has been on high alert since the outbreak across a porous border in the eastern DRC, where more than 2,000 cases of the highly contagious virus have been recorded, two-thirds of which have been fatal.

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