3 more #Marburg cases confirmed

By Robert Muhereza
October 27,  2012

The new victims are relatives of a mortuary attendant who died after coming in contact with dead bodies.

 
Here is a previous reference to this person, the mortuary attendant.  The blog entry is located here.  The blog entry is Oct. 24th:

The two new cases reported on Monday are an 18-year-old female student from Kabale Secondary School, who was admitted at Kabale Regional Referral Hospital.
Her brother, a mortuary attendant at the hospital, died last week shortly after preparing the body of the first suspected marburg victim.

The same blog entry happens to mention that  1^st Suspected Case  was reported October 10.

So the death of Jason was somewhere from October 14 - 20th.



The 18-year-old is logged into my list as:  

Name: Female (18) Secondary School Student

From:  Kabale

Adm:   10/22  Rushoroza HCC

Confirmed:  negative

Note:  Her Brother died last week shortly after preparing the body of the first suspected Marburg victim. 

Continuing with the article:

Three patients admitted to the Marburg fever isolation centre at Rushoroza Health Centre III in Kabale Town have tested positive raising the number of confirmed cases to five.

The Kabale District Health Officer, Dr Patrick Tusiime, said on Friday that the new victims were the relatives of Kabale Regional Referral Hospital mortuary attendant Jason Tumukunde, who died four days after he treated bodies of people who had died of the virus on October 4.

“The mother, wife and eight-year-old daughter of Tumukunde have tested positive. The epidemic is real and people should join the experts to stop its further spread,” Dr Tusiime said. 

He added that the number of people that got in close contact with the confirmed Marburg virus victims has increased from 40 early this week to 177.

So if the mortuary attendant died on October 8th, I am not seeing him on my list.  I have the Mother, and "elderly brother" both dying in early October.  My next burial is Oct. 18th, and is a relative.  I'm missing something.
From the Health Ministers statement of 10/25, posted here, I have this summary: -->

5 Family Members:  2 confirmed on 10/19, 3 others within 1 month.

Where:  Kitumba Parish, Kitumba Sub-county, Kabale District.

Index Case:  Family Member from Rwabirondo Village, Kitumba parish.

Index Case DOD:  9/20/12

Two Family Members died afterward:  Sister & Mother

Tourism is starting to become affected:

Tourists cancel trip
Meanwhile, an official from Matooke Tours and Travel, one of the biggest tour companies in Uganda, Mr Gashom Arinaitwe, on Thursday said about 50 tourists from America, Europe and Asia had cancelled bookings because of the Marburg scare. This comes three days after the Uganda Wildlife Authority issued a warning to tourists visiting national parks, especially those that are habitats for primates.

The authority has put in place a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary national team to mobilise and sensitise the public on precautionary measures, including wearing protective gowns, gloves and masks and not to avoid sharing sharp objects.