Boy’s Ebola death stirs fears disease is spreading
Fears worsened Wednesday that the year-old Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo could spread to neighboring countries, as a boy in Uganda died from the disease and two of his close relatives there were infected.
The boy, 5, from a Congolese family who had crossed into western Uganda on June 9, was the first confirmed case of Ebola outside the Democratic Republic of Congo since the highly infectious illness erupted last summer in the eastern part of the vast African country.
Signaling his concern, the director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced that he was convening a meeting of a group of outside expert advisers Friday to assess whether the Ebola spread had become an international public health emergency.
It will be the third such meeting on the Ebola outbreak by the group of experts, known as the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee.
The WHO, which reported the first Uganda case Tuesday, said Wednesday that the child had died and that his 50-yearold grandmother and 3-year-old brother were confirmed to have tested positive for Ebola. The organization said that a hospital in a Uganda border town, Bwera, was treating them in isolation and that at least eight people may have been in contact with the first victim, raising the risk of further infections.
“This first death, of a child, is a sickening reminder of the dangers of this disease,” said Brechtje van Lith, the Uganda director for Save the Children, an international charity. The charity said that “governments, donors and agencies must act immediately to prevent further deaths.”
Ebola, a viral disease that causes internal bleeding, is spread through bodily fluids of infected people and is extremely contagious.