Uganda closed its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, citing growing concerns about the possible spread of the Ebola virus, the country’s health ministry said.
The outbreak is centered in Congo’s Ituri province, which is on Uganda’s western border, and there have already been seven confirmed cases of the virus in Kampala, the Ugandan capital. One Ebola patient died in Kampala early in the outbreak, when he traveled to a hospital there to seek treatment.
Dr. Diana Atwine, the top official in Uganda’s ministry of health, said the border would be closed temporarily. “The only exceptions are for authorized Ebola response teams, the humanitarian operations, food and cargo transportation and security, but all this still will be under a strict health screening and monitoring protocols across the border,” Dr. Atwine said at a news conference in Kampala on Wednesday.
“All authorized entrants shall be subjected to strict health screening,” she said.
More than 1,000 cases and more than 200 deaths have been recorded in the outbreak, largely in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the World Health Organization. The organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency on May 17.
The current outbreak is the third largest on record. Health experts say that cuts by the Trump administration to disease surveillance networks and the closure of the United States Agency for International Development have impeded the response to the outbreak.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is the East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya.
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