(Newser)
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Ebola is back. Health officials have confirmed that a deadly virus that killed 14 people in western Uganda earlier this month is a new "outbreak of Ebola," reports the AP. "Laboratory investigations done at the Uganda Virus Research Institute ... have confirmed that the strange disease reported in Kibaale is indeed Ebola hemorrhagic fever," wrote the WHO and Ugandan government in a joint statement.
Officials are urging people to remain calm, saying that a taskforce is moving quickly to contain the disease. An outbreak of Ebola in Uganda in 2000 killed 224 people and traumatized hundreds more. There is no cure or vaccine for the highly infectious and deadly virus that was first reported in 1978 in Congo. Already one health clinic officer and her 4-month-old baby have died in the latest outbreak, and one of the biggest difficulties in containing Ebola is the danger it poses to doctors and nurses treating it, too. "Their lives are at stake," says a Ugandan health official.
