Ebola Lethal Outbreak Confirmed

Health officials say that a lethal Ebola virus has killed 16 people and infected 51 others in western Uganda.

By: Katie Cook
Nov 30, 2007, 10:22 AM EST

The first Ebola case was reported on November 10 in Bundibugyo district on the border with DR Congo, where three patients are currently in an isolation ward.

Virologists say previous strains destroyed the linings of flowing blood capillaries and vessels, prompting fluids to drain out of the circulatory system through the body's orifices and pores, killing the victim through shock.

Analysis on victims' blood and tissue samples sent to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control's pathogens laboratory behaved differently from previous known strains of Ebola.

But there is not much bleeding in the new strain that appears to kill its victims after provoking a high fever.

Health authorities have assembled epidemiologists and virologists in the affected district to monitor the disease.

An outbreak of Ebola, a highly contagious disease that can have fatality rates as high as 90 percent, killed at least 170 people in northern Uganda's Gulu district in 2000.

A similar outbreak has killed at least 26 people in DR Congo's West Kasai region in recent weeks, according to the country's Health Minister Victor Makwenge Kaput.

The Ebola virus was first identified in 1976 in Sudan and in a nearby region of Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire). Outbreaks of Ebola have also occurred in the Ivory Coast and Gabon.

It spreads by direct human contact, especially through infected blood.