Uganda: Medical staff bore the brunt of "sly" new Ebola virus

Authorities are monitoring hundreds of people (Image: Stuart Price/IRIN)

"It has taken us three months to diagnose that this was Ebola," Sam Zaramba, the director-general of health services, told IRIN on 6 December. "It presented itself differently from the known haemorrhagic fevers. Instead of patients passing blood from body openings, it was characterised by high fever, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, vomiting and headaches."

When the disease broke out in September, health workers in Bundibugyo thought it was one of the many common ailments prevalent among the 250,000 population, mainly farmers of cocoa, rice and vanilla and small-scale cattle-raisers.

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