Samples of eight people who were contacts of the first Ebola case from Masaka district have tested negative. The suspects had been identified during the contact tracing process by the joint Ebola Taskforce.
At the beginning of this month, Masaka was declared prone to the deadly hemorrhagic fever after a patient who had been admitted at the Masaka Regional Referral Hospital tested positive for Ebola Virus.
According to the hospital administration, the first patient also passed on the virus to two more people after having direct contact with them.
It is believed the patient exposed several other people to risks of infection after she allegedly interacted with them before her admission into the hospital.
Ronald Katende, the Masaka Resident City Commissioner and head of the joint Ebola taskforce says the results from samples from the Uganda Virus Research Institute have turned negative for the virus.
The suspects whose identities he declines to reveal for fear of stigma were identified by the surveillance team.
Katende however reveals that the surveillance teams have only managed to successively trace a few out of the very many contacts that are suspected to have been exposed to the virus.
According to Katende, the surveillance team had identified at least 90 contacts, but many of these have deliberately declined to hand themselves in for close monitoring by the health experts, and have instead gone into hiding.
Katende explains that the task force has embarked on rigorous public sensitization with intention of dispelling the delusions that had been created in the community about Ebola and its spread.
Peter Ayoti, the Masaka District Public Health Educator says that they are now using Village Health Teams-VHTs to help in locating the homes or hideouts of all suspects identified in the contact tracing process, such that they can also be put under monitoring for Ebola symptoms.
According to Ayoti, some community members are still skeptical about Ebola, something that is partly frustrating the response intervention.
Ayoti says they have considered invoking the intervention of security agencies to provide backup to members of the surveillance team.
