Patients, nurses flee city hospital over Ebola scare

There was panic at China-Uganda Friendship Hospital Naguru in Nakawa Division as patients and some health workers dashed out of the wards subsequent to an Ebola scare.
Dr Emmanuel Batibwe, the hospital director, said a patient had been admitted with Ebola-like symptoms before he died on the night of Wednesday.
The samples were taken to the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) in Entebbe.
“At this point people will be terrified even at mere bleeding but we are still keeping the body until results are out,” Dr Batibwe told the Daily Monitor yesterday.
An iron sheet makeshift isolation unit has also been erected at Naguru Hospital
Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the Health minister, said the isolation unit is not cause for alarm but just to prepare for any unlikely event of any Ebola outbreak in Kampala given that the country is at high risk.
“It is better to create an isolation unit because you don’t know how it will end because you cannot be keeping the patient at the general ward,” Dr Aceng said yesterday.
The Ebola scare at Naguru is among those that have caused panic in different districts including Mbarara, Hoima and Pakwach.
The Health ministry, however, said Uganda has not registered any new confirmed Ebola cases in Kasese District or any other part of Uganda apart from the three cases that were confirmed at the beginning of this month.
All the three people from the same family have since passed on
By Wednesday, 92 contacts to the confirmed Ebola cases in Kagando and Bwera were being followed up daily. Ring vaccination of contacts of the confirmed Ebola cases is also still ongoing.