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Officials from the World Health Organization wear protective clothing as they prepare to enter Kagadi Hospital in Kibale District, about 200 kilometres from Kampala, where an outbreak of Ebola virus started.
Ugandans have been warned to limit their physical contact, avoiding activities like kissing and handshaking, as six more people were confirmed to have contracted the deadly Ebola virus.
A total of 25 people are known to have contracted the virus and 14 have died since the outbreak struck a remote western village three weeks ago. Several more people were admitted to local hosptials on Tuesday with Ebola-like symptoms, health officials told Uganda’s Daily Mointor.
As medical experts try to contain the outbreak, which was only confirmed last week, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni advised people to avoid shaking hands, having sex, or partaking in any other activity in which bodily fluids could be exchanged.
“We discourage the shaking of hands because that can cause contact through sweat, which can cause problems . . . when people are sick in hospitals, from symptoms which look like Ebola, they should be handled by medical workers with protective gear,†he said.
Government and health officials have mobilized teams of doctors to try and stamp-out the virus and prevent a repeat of a 2000 outbreak that left some 200 people dead.
In the Kibaale district, where the latest outbreak is centered, some were fearing the worst.
"People here love their drinking for instance, but now they're too scared to go to bars as they normally do daily," farmer Kiiza Xavier told Reuters.
There is no known cure for Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever that kills between 50 and 80 percent of infected people. The virus is also highly-contagious, passed person-to-person through saliva, sweat and other bodily fluids.
Ebola is named after a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo where the virus was first detected in 1976.
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