Africa CDC Calls for Lifting Uganda Travel Ban

At the African Union health summit in Ghana, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya announced that Uganda has gone three weeks without reporting a new Ebola case and discharged its last patient earlier this month. Kaseya urged that countries should not face penalties for being transparent about disease outbreaks.

This statement comes as the US has tightened travel restrictions on Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan amid the regional outbreak. Kaseya also warned that the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo is rapidly worsening, with more than confirmed cases and over deaths since May.

The Africa CDC estimates that nearly one billion dollars is necessary to contain the outbreak, cautioning that without urgent international funding and enhanced disease surveillance, the crisis could escalate into the worst Ebola outbreak on record.