Ebola outbreak in Uganda has ended

An Ebola virus outbreak in Uganda is now over according to the government's health agency. The spread of Ebola began a couple of months ago and killed 16 people. Officials have not said what started the spread of the disease.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Elias Biryabarema tells us more about the announcement.

"The Ministry of Health has ... officially declared an end of the Ebola outbreak that broke out in Kibaale district in July. This follows completion of the 42 days of the post-Ebola surveillance countdown period which is a pre-requisite of the World Health Organization," it said in a statement late on Thursday.

Uganda first confirmed the Ebola outbreak on July 28 in Kibaale district, 170 km (100 miles) west of the capital Kampala, on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo where the virus first emerged in 1976, taking its name from the Ebola River.

Uganda has suffered several Ebola outbreaks before, the biggest in 2000, when 425 people were infected by the virus and more than half of them died.