Uganda's health minister on Tuesday declared the country Ebola-free, following the latest outbreak of the viral haemorrhagic disease which infected 20 people and killed two in the country.
Health Minister Chris Baryomunsi said the announcement followed the "successful completion of the mandatory 42-day monitoring period which began after the discharge of the last Ugandan national, a locally transmitted patient, on 16 June 2026".
"Enhanced surveillance has detected no unexplained community transmission," he added in a statement published on social media earlier on Tuesday.
The last Ebola patient in Uganda, a Congolese national, was discharged on 22 June.
The World Health Organization requires a 42-day waiting period to declare the end of an outbreak.
Confirmed cases
Of the 20 confirmed cases discovered during the outbreak, 18 were discharged while two people died from the virus, both of whom were from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"Throughout this period the Ministry of Health maintained intensive surveillance nationwide and no new Ebola cases have been detected," Baryomunsi said.
Uganda has suffered multiple outbreaks of Ebola since 2000, when it recorded its first epidemic, and officials say that over the years the country has gained expertise it has used to bring recent infections under control quickly, with limited community spread.
Most of the 15 cases declared in Uganda since mid-May were people infected in the DRC, the epicentre of the epidemic, where the number of confirmed cases now stands at more than 3,200.
Vulnerable to outbreaks
Officials say Uganda's many tropical forests, which teem with fruit bats, natural reservoirs for the virus, make it vulnerable to frequent outbreaks.
The virus is transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids and tissue, and symptoms include headache, vomiting blood, muscle pain and bleeding.
It is the fastest spreading outbreak in history, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. In comparison, the 2018 outbreak in the DRC took around 235 days to reach more than 1,000 cases.
This latest Ebola outbreak is the third-largest on record. Substantial cuts to global health aid, particularly the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development and the withdrawal of US funding from the WHO, have significantly weakened prevention systems, according to the UN.
