A Ugandan health official says six more patients suspected to have Ebola have been hospitalised.
This comes mere days after investigators confirmed an outbreak of the highly infectious disease in a remote corner of western Uganda.
Stephen Bayaruhanga, health secretary of the affected Kibaale district, said Monday that possible cases of Ebola, at first concentrated in a single village, are now being reported in more villages.
But many sick people with suspected Ebola are unwilling to be taken to the hospital, he said, because they are terrified of contracting the disease if Ebola is not what they have.
If the six new cases are confirmed as Ebola, it would bring to 26 the number of Ugandans infected with the virus this month. At least 14 people have died.
The rare haemorrhagic disease, named after a small river in DR Congo, killed 37 people in western Uganda in 2007 and claimed the lives of at least 170 people in the north of the country in 2000.
The Centres for Disease Control has a Q&A on Ebola.
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