Ugandan authorities have imposed a travel lockdown on two Ebola-hit districts as part of efforts to contain an outbreak of the disease that has killed 19 people so far.
The measures announced by President Yoweri Museveni mean residents of the central Ugandan districts of Mubende and Kassanda cannot travel into or out of those areas by private or public means.
Cargo lorries will still be allowed to enter and leave the two areas, but all other transport was suspended, he said.
All entertainment places, including bars, as well as places of worship must close, and all burials in those districts must be supervised by health officials, Mr Museveni said. A night-time curfew also has been imposed. The restrictions will last at least 21 days.
“These are temporary measures to control the spread of Ebola,” he said.
The particular strain now circulating in Uganda is known as the Sudan Ebola virus, for which there is currently no vaccine. It has infected 58 people in the East African country since September 20, when authorities declared an outbreak. At least 19 people have died, including four health workers.
Ugandan authorities were slow to detect the outbreak, which began infecting people in a farming community in August.
The lockdown measures come amid concern that some patients in the Ebola hot spots could surreptitiously try to seek treatment elsewhere — as did one man who fled Mubende and died at a hospital in Kampala earlier this month.
Ugandan authorities have documented more than 1,100 contacts of known Ebola patients, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ebola, which in a viral haemorrhagic fever, can be difficult to detect at first because fever is also a symptom of malaria.
The infection spreads through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.
Ebola first appeared in 1976 in simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River after which the disease is named.
