GENEVA (Reuters)
- Sixty-eight out of a reported 191 victims of the deadly Ebola
fever in northern Uganda have now died, the World Health Organization
said on Friday.
They include
a nurse who died after being infected by contact with patients,
a spokesman for the United Nations (news - web sites)' health
agency said.
On Monday
the toll stood at 55. WHO says the outbreak is likely to last
another two to three months and that it expects the number of
cases to rise. There is no cure for the hemorrhagic fever, which
is spread by human contact and brings massive internal bleeding.
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.
Before the
outbreak in Uganda's Gulu province, WHO said ebola had claimed
793 lives in nearly 1,100 documented cases. It was first discovered
in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an epidemic
killed more than 270 people.
More recently,
ebola killed 245 people in the Congolese town of Kikwit in 1995.
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