Relief Web story (click here) about the growing Hepatitis E epidemic in northern Uganda... However, this is old news... There are now reports of infection in Gulu, the largest town in the north. In addition, the reported cases and deaths are generally assumed to be 2 to 3 X higher than these official totals...
There seems to still be a lot of mystery about Hepatitis E. Since its first documentation in India in 1955, there have been a handful of outbreaks, the last being in Darfur a few years back. All of these were in contained areas, and other modes of transmission beyond contaminated water points are unknown. A team from the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta arrived a couple of days back to do tests.
One of the most worrying things about this crisis is the long incubation period (6-8 weeks). By the time health facilities get their first reports, the disease might already have spread and infected large numbers of the population. While it had been confined to Kitgum, it the past week it has spread to two other districts.
Relief Web story (click here) about the growing Hepatitis E epidemic in northern Uganda... However, this is old news... There are now reports of infection in Gulu, the largest town in the north. In addition, the reported cases and deaths are generally assumed to be 2 to 3 X higher than these official totals...
There seems to still be a lot of mystery about Hepatitis E. Since its first documentation in India in 1955, there have been a handful of outbreaks, the last being in Darfur a few years back. All of these were in contained areas, and other modes of transmission beyond contaminated water points are unknown. A team from the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta arrived a couple of days back to do tests.
One of the most worrying things about this crisis is the long incubation period (6-8 weeks). By the time health facilities get their first reports, the disease might already have spread and infected large numbers of the population. While it had been confined to Kitgum, it the past week it has spread to two other districts.
2 comments:
I was just poking around the internet and read on the USDA site that there is some evidence of transfer from animals to human (particularly swine), first documented in 2002 "involving human consumption of raw wild boar liver and raw deer meat."
-brock
that is another huge concern... we've been looking into the swine to animal connection... in one camp near the Sudanese border where the epidemic is particularly bad, they have a huge pig population roaming the town and defecating everywhere... the question is, can you get it from uncooked meat? pig droppings? or are they just hosts?
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