The Ebola outbreak in Uganda has been significantly worsened, and the country's ability to contain spreads has been severely weakened by the Trump administration's freeze on foreign aid, US officials said.
Officials representing various health and security agencies conducted their assessments during a meeting with staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Audio recordings of the session were obtained by The New York Times.
Two more people died. The 4-year-old mother and her newborn brother who passed away last week, American officials said. The mother and siblings passed away earlier than age 4, but were not identified as a possible Ebola case until they were buried by delayed contact traces.
82 people have so far been identified as intimate contact between her two children with her mother, who is at high risk for infection, of which 68 are currently quarantined, others are still being tracked. Officials said their ability to track contact information for public health workers and monitor new cases has been severely hampered without US support.
Their contact details are already symptomatic and are hospitalized in the ward of a quarantine hospital, Ugandan American officials said at the meeting. The 4-year-old was treated at four different medical facilities before being diagnosed with Ebola. This means that most people who may be exposed to the virus are healthcare workers.
At a meeting Wednesday, American officials said the Ugandan government also lacked sufficient laboratory supplies, diagnostic equipment and protective equipment for healthcare workers and those tracking contacts. The termination of grants from the U.S. International Development Agency had hampered their ability to procure those supplies, one official said. Representatives from the State Department, USAID, the Department of Defense, the US Embassy in Uganda and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were attended at the video conference.
In response to comments on concerns raised at the meeting, a State Department spokesperson sent an email saying that the US government is working with Uganda and other partners. The cooperation between the two governments said “so far, the outbreak has minimized the impact on US citizens.”
The outbreak is caused by strains of the Ebola virus that do not have approved vaccines or treatments. So far, it has caused four deaths, 12 confirmed cases and two suspected infections. Public health experts say it can get much worse without the right resources to control it.
The African Centers for Disease Control said Thursday that three people, 4 years old, have been identified in the cluster, with five cases involving two possibilities. Although these cases were far from the original, genomic sequencing suggests that the same virus caused a new virus.
The outbreak was declared on January 30th after the death of a 32-year-old nurse in Kampala, who had sought care at several major hospitals across the country and consulted traditional healers in the eastern Mbar district.
It was the first time that the first case of an outbreak has been identified in the capital, with a population of around 6 million, raising additional challenges for containment and raising great concerns about the potential for a rapidly spreading virus in densely populated urban areas. At the meeting. US officials expressed concern that there was no investigation into non-traumatic deaths occurring in Kampala and determined whether Ebola caused more.
Dr Herbert Ruswata, president of the Uganda Medical Association, said the Ebola response has been severely hampered by lack of US support, and that Uganda's health system has been significantly prepared and responded better than at the last Ebola outbreak in 2022.
Dozens of health workers joined in 2022 to help treat patients, he said. Currently, due to the funding and shortage of protective equipment, many people are scared this time, especially in high-risk quarantine units.
In the current outbreak, he “it seemed like Uganda would die because of the lack of USAID money and CDC expertise,” he said.
This week, the UN launched an emergency appeal to raise $11.2 million to help Uganda contain the Ebola outbreak, as U.S. aid will put a burden on the country's health budget.
On February 26, Elon Musk told cabinet members that his team of government efficiency “recovered Ebola prevention quickly and there was no interruption” after “mistakes” cancelled US support for efforts to contain the Ebola ministry. However, four of the five contracts for Ebola-related work have actually been cut.
Embassy staff told colleagues during a meeting Wednesday that the two, which had not been restored, were $1.6 million out of the $2.2 million “a large portion of USAID support.”
At the meeting, USAID staff introduced themselves by saying that they had taken over the emergency file after their predecessor took their administrative leave. He said: “Our intention is to get answers to important awards. We're working on that, but there's no solid updates right now.”
One official last week expressed concern over surveillance of community diseases, where critical U.S. assistance has ended.
“With the orders for the suspension work and the end of the award, there is no more programming. So the future outlook is currently a concern, and that's what we're hearing from the local preparation group,” she said.
Another official then jumped into the conversation and said there was good reason for concern given the outbreak of other diseases in the area, one of the other viral hemorrhagic fevers, and the serious movements of people across the land's borders.
Cases in a new cluster of Ebola infections and deaths have not been identified as contacts from the original cases, highlighting the weakness of the current surveillance system.
From the start, this Ebola outbreak declaration has rattled health workers nationwide.
At the Mbale Regional referral hospital, where nurses in the first identified cases were seeking medical consultations, doctors complained about the shortage of supplies, including masks, gloves, gloves, facial shields, and thermometers, to reduce exposure and risk of infection. Many refused to attend patients until they had access to much needed preventive materials.
Two doctors working at the hospital said they had no funds to deploy surveillance systems for at least two days or to carry out effective contact tracing on Mbale, as the government asked medical staff not to talk to the news.
Although there is no approved vaccine for this Ebola strain, two experimental vaccines have been deployed in Uganda, with over 250 contacts of infected people being vaccinated.
But even as they tried to contain the outbreak, health officials were hesitant to impose serious restrictions due to prolonged anger from measures taken during the community's pandemic. Tourism officials also urged the government not to restrict travel for fear that it would destroy jobs.
Misinformation about Ebola continues among the public, and many see it as a tactic to secure foreign aid and integrate the grip of the ruling party as election season progresses. Doctors in Kampala have also criticised the country's health ministry and its partners for being less transparent about information during this Ebola outbreak compared to the previous Ebola outbreak.
The Ugandan government has dismissed accusations that Ebola's response efforts have been hampered and called them “basic.” Henry Kyobe Bosa, an epidemiologist who oversees the Ministry of Health's Ebola response, said the authorities were quickly detected, identified contacts and placed them in quarantine. Additionally, close contacts have been added to the no-fly list to prevent them from leaving the country, he said.
“We overdrive,” Bosa said in an interview. “We did it right from the start.”
