By: Melanie Aanyu

The death toll from an Ebola outbreak in Uganda has risen to nine, the health ministry said , two weeks after the authorities announced an epidemic in the centre of the country.

The new toll rose from seven, the figure was given on Friday.

Last month the health ministry announced the landlocked nation’s first fatality from the highly contagious virus since 2019, declaring an outbreak in the central district of Mubende.

Ebola is an often-fatal viral haemorrhagic fever named after a river in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where it was discovered in 1976.

The health ministry tweeted yesterday- Monday that the total number of Ebola cases identified in the country stood at 43, with nearly 900 contact cases identified.

Last week President Yoweri Museveni ruled out imposing a lockdown to contain the virus, saying that “government has capacity to control this outbreak as we have done before”