Sunday, July 29, 2012
Associated Press
KAMPALA, Uganda
The deadly Ebola virus has killed 14 people in western Uganda this month, Ugandan health officials said Saturday, ending weeks of speculation about the cause of a strange disease that had many people fleeing their homes.
The officials and a World Health Organization representative told a news conference in Kampala Saturday that there is “an outbreak of Ebola” in Uganda.
“Laboratory investigations done at the Uganda Virus Research Institute ... have confirmed that the strange disease reported in Kibaale is indeed Ebola hemorrhagic fever,” the Ugandan government and WHO said in joint statement.
Kibaale is a district in midwestern Uganda, where people in recent weeks have been troubled by a mysterious illness that seemed to have come from nowhere.
Ugandan health officials had been stumped as well, and spent weeks conducting laboratory tests that were at first inconclusive.
It appears firm evidence of Ebola was clinched overnight Friday.