KAMPALA, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- Uganda's capital Kampala is experiencing a Cholera outbreak which has left eight people admitted to an isolation center, a ministry of health official said here on Tuesday.
"Eight people are admitted at an isolation center at the China-Uganda Friendship Hospital in Kampala," Emma Ainebyoona, ministry of health spokesperson told Xinhua by telephone on Tuesday.
He said the ministry had already dispatched a team to study the source of the outbreak.
"We are working with the city authority health teams to sensitize the public about proper sanitation. The situation will be contained," Ainebyoona said.
Cholera is a serious acute infectious disease characterized by watery diarrhea and vomiting and can kill a person within hours, according to the ministry of health. It is spread through eating and drinking food contaminated with fecal matter of an infected person.
Early last year, in midwestern Uganda, the disease left over 45 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo dead and some 2,000 others hospitalized.
Government then started a cholera vaccination exercise in some parts of the country where the disease had broken out.
Uganda is among the five African countries supported by the World Health Organization, United Nations Children's Fund and GAVI, global Vaccine Alliance, to use the Oral Cholera Vaccine in the fight against the deadly disease.
