Uganda to deploy Ebola vaccine in two weeks, says WHO official

Uganda declared an outbreak of Ebola on Sept. 20, several days after the contagious disease began spreading in a rural farming community. A lockdown and nighttime curfew measures are now in place in the outbreak's epicentre, about 150 kilometres (90 miles) west of the capital, Kampala.

Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Scientists don't know the natural reservoir of the virus, but they suspect the first victim in an Ebola outbreak gets infected through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat. Ugandan officials are still investing in the source of the current outbreak.

Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed more than 200 people. The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the disease's largest death toll ever.

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River after which the disease is named.