Ugandans are bristling at the rare Ebola virus type called “Bundibugyo,” after the name of a small district in western Uganda became associated with an outbreak that has hit eastern Congo, where hundreds of people have been infected. Officials in Kampala and the government spokesperson said Uganda is not the epicenter and that the cases reported inside Uganda are linked to cross-border exposure in Congo.
Before it became a hard-to-pronounce Ebola label, Bundibugyo was a mountainous district along Uganda’s border with Congo that is home to about 200,000 people, many of whom farm cocoa on steep hills. Even some residents said it is difficult to find on a map, but it is now mentioned in connection with a current outbreak that has infected hundreds of people in eastern Congo. The outbreak has included “160 suspected Ebola deaths” in two provinces, according to the report.
The government-linked concern focuses on how disease names can affect communities. Alan Kasujja, a Ugandan government spokesman, said on X that “Bundibugyo is too beautiful to be the name of a disease,” and he urged global health authorities to help clarify that Uganda is not the epicenter. He also called for taking back the district’s name from what he described as “this madness,” framing the issue as stigma rather than scientific classification.
The report said the World Health Organization is responsible for taxonomic descriptions and that the agency has been sensitive to using descriptors that could stigmatize communities, drawing a comparison to the mpox naming change in 2022 from monkeypox. With Ebola, however, the trend has been to name virus types after the places where they were first identified, the report said.
Ugandan health officials said there is “no Ebola” in Bundibugyo, and they pointed to the current situation in Congo. Uganda has reported five cases, all linked to the outbreak in Congo, including a 59-year-old Congolese man who was admitted to a Kampala hospital on May 11 and died three days later. Ugandan health authorities said Saturday that a driver and a health worker—both Ugandans—who had been exposed to that patient tested positive. The other cases reported in Uganda are two Congolese women who sought medical care in Uganda before Congo declared an outbreak on May 15.
President Yoweri Museveni said Thursday that the outbreak is on “the Congo side” mainly, and he urged local tourism authorities to counter the perception that Ebola is spreading in Uganda. Museveni also urged people to “stop shaking hands” as part of measures to avoid infection. He ordered the postponement of an annual religious event that draws thousands of pilgrims from Congo and elsewhere, scheduled near a Catholic basilica just outside Kampala by June 3, according to the report.
Additional measures announced Thursday included the suspension of all public transportation and flights between Congo and Uganda, and health officials emphasized contact tracing. Dr. Emmanuel Batiibwe, who previously led efforts to stop an Ebola outbreak in 2022 that killed at least 55 people, said stopping the current outbreak from spreading into Uganda will require “enhanced surveillance at all points of entry.” He described contact tracing and isolation as especially important, along with ensuring health workers have proper protective equipment.
The Bundibugyo connection dates to nearly two decades ago, when a November 2007 outbreak in a remote part of western Uganda was flagged as a new species of Ebola, the report said. The outbreak was not the Sudan virus (named for the region in present-day South Sudan where it was first identified), and it was not the type known as Zaire, as present-day Congo was known when Ebola was first discovered in 1976. Scientists later contained that 2007 outbreak by the end of the year after it killed at least 37 people, and a smaller outbreak of the same virus type followed in 2012 in Congo’s northeast.
Dr. Tom Ksiazek, a University of Texas Medical Branch virologist who directed the group within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that first identified the Bundibugyo virus, said earlier identification of initial cases in those outbreaks allowed for a quick public health response. For the current outbreak, the report said all available vaccines and treatments for Ebola do not work for Bundibugyo patients, making surveillance, tracing, and protective equipment central to efforts to prevent further spread.
The World Health Organization has said a family of fruit bats is believed to be the natural host of the viruses that cause Ebola, and that Ebola spreads through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials.