Reuters
Geneva
- The death toll from Ebola fever in northern Uganda rose to 60
on Tuesday and the outbreak is expected to continue for months,
the World Health Organization said.
The deaths
in Uganda's Gulu province rose from 55 on Monday and the number
of cases reported also rose to 165 from Monday's 160, Valery Abramov,
spokesman for the Geneva-based U.N. health agency said.
Although the
rate of hospital admissions had stabilized at between five and
10 patients a day, further waves of the fever were expected, he
said.
``We're still
in the middle of one wave. They (health experts) are expecting
three or four waves which means it could still go on for another
two-and-a-half, if not three months,'' Abramov told a news briefing.
There is no known cure for the hemorrhagic fever, which is spread
by human contact and causes massive internal bleeding.
The WHO says
the incubation period is between two and 21 days.
The exact
origin of the virus and how and why it flares up are unknown.
Symptoms include sudden onset of fever, weakness, headache, muscle
ache, abdominal pain and sore throat, followed by vomiting, diarrhea
and internal and external bleeding.
The WHO says
that before the Uganda outbreak Ebola had claimed 793 lives in
nearly 1,100 documented cases since the virus was discovered in
1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an epidemic
killed more than 270 people.
The latest
outbreak is the first in Uganda, although Marburg fever, which
has similar characteristics, killed 19 people there in 1976.
WHO officials
have been unable to say whether the final toll is likely to match
the 245 people who died in the Congolese town of Kikwit in 1995.
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