The Ugandan government and the World Health Organization recently confirmed an outbreak of Sudan virus disease. The index (first-known) case of this outbreak is thought to be a 32-year-old male nurse from a hospital in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.
The WHO reported two main clusters, related to the patient’s family and a hospital cluster. At the time of writing, the index case is the sole recorded death. The second case was the patient’s wife, and as of February 11, there were nine confirmed cases.
Outbreaks of this virus are relatively rare. This new outbreak is the ninth to have been recorded since 1976 when the virus was first identified and – as was practice at the time – named after the location where this first outbreak took place, southern Sudan.
