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KAMPALA
(Reuters) - A Ugandan woman unwittingly spread the deadly
Ebola epidemic after fleeing a hospital at the center of
the outbreak in a desperate attempt to escape the virus,
officials said on Monday.
The
unnamed patient had been receiving treatment for a different
illness in St Mary's Hospital at Lacor, close to the town
of Gulu.
"When
she learned there was Ebola in Lacor, she ran away,"
said Sam Okware, Uganda's commissioner for health services.
But
it now appears she was already infected with Ebola -- which
in many cases leads to massive internal bleeding, shock,
and eventually death. There is no known cure for the disease
which has killed at least 109 people in the latest outbreak.
The
woman died and unknowingly passed Ebola to relatives in
her home village in Masindi district, 120 km (75 miles)
south of Gulu. The virus spreads through direct contact
with an infected person.
"Her
daughter and another dependant in the house also died, and
the husband of the daughter is now in hospital," Okware
said.
Ebola
experts from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention confirmed that blood samples from the woman's
son-in-law had tested positive for Ebola. He has been isolated
in hospital near his home village.
Health
ministry officials and staff from the World Health Organization
(WHO) and aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres traveled to
Masindi on Monday.
"They
want to get all the contacts -- all the people at the burials,
those that had cared for them," Okware said.
The
outbreak began early in October and spread late last month
to the southern commercial town of Mbarara, where four people
have died. Nineteen new suspected cases have been admitted
to hospitals in Gulu since Friday.
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