Uganda Red Cross gives packages to Ebola-free patients - Newstime Africa

Uganda â€" Ebola patients

The Uganda Red Cross Society has delivered discharge packages for Ebola free patients, who will be let to go back home anytime. According to the spokesperson of URCS, Catherine Ntabadde the items were handed over to Kibaale District authorities over the weekend. The items will be given to 29 patients in isolation unit who have been confirmed Ebola free and are ready for discharge. Uganda Red Cross Society is providing non food items like plates, cups, mosquito nets, tarpaulins, soap, blankets, water cans and mattresses.

In the same package, according to Ntabadde, World Health Organisation (WHO) will provide food, shoes and clothes. Uganda’s ministry of health and its partners have finalised the discharge protocol to guide the process of discharging the free patients and integrating them back into the community. URCS volunteers are to provide psychosocial support to the discharged persons as part of the rehabilitation and re-unification process with their relatives and into the community. Ntabadde adds that, URCS volunteers has sensitised 543 households reaching 3, 192 people with information on Ebola.

The volunteers have covered 32 villages through door-door sensitisation. Ebola was confirmed in Uganda at the end of last month, several days after a number of people died in the western district of Kibaale, 200Km from Uganda’s capital, Kampala. At least 17 people have died of the disease. This is the fourth outbreak of Ebola in Uganda since 2000, when the disease killed 224 people and left hundreds more traumatised in northern Uganda. Ebola is highly infectious and kills quickly. According to the WHO, about 1,850 cases of the disease â€" with more than 1,200 deaths â€" have been documented in the world ever since Ebola was discovered in 1976 in Democratic Republic of Congo.

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