Mubende, Uganda – As soon as the Sudan ebolavirus was detected in Uganda and an outbreak was declared on 20 September 2020, the country’s health authorities placed emphasis on supportive care, as no effective vaccine for this species of ebolavirus has yet been licenced. 

With support from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners, they promptly set up an Ebola treatment centre at the Mubende Regional Referral Hospital, where the first case had been detected, and deployed health workers and emergency services to the site.

In addition to training doctors, clinical officers and nurses in case management and infection prevention and control, WHO has also provided sufficient Ebola kits to treat 100 patients as it seeks to help Uganda overcome the outbreak as swiftly as possible.

At the Mubende Regional Referral Hospital’s emergency unit, Nurse Halima Adam and her team of health workers gather for a meeting first thing every morning. But the morning of 19 September was different. “We had started getting very sick patients with bleeding,” she recalls.

A sample was taken from one such patient and sent to the Uganda Virus Research Institute. “In the evening, we had confirmation that this patient was positive for Ebola,” Adam says. The next day, an Ebola outbreak was officially declared by the government.