Uganda confirms Marburg outbreak in western district, WHO offers support

Uganda has confirmed a Marburg infection in Kyegegwa district in western Uganda, and the patient, a one-and-a-half-year-old child, died. Africa CDC said no contacts of the case had developed symptoms and that there was no active Marburg case in Uganda, even as early reports suggested a possible second case that could not be verified.

The finding came during surveillance for Uganda’s Ebola outbreak, which WHO says was confirmed in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda in May 2026. Uganda’s Ministry of Health portal listed 20 cumulative confirmed Ebola cases as of July 2, with 15 imported cases, 5 local cases, 3 current admissions, 15 recoveries and 2 cumulative deaths, a reminder that the country’s public-health system is already juggling two filovirus threats at once.

WHO said it was supporting the local response with case investigation, active case finding, contact tracing and community engagement, while Uganda requested more information before the agency updates member states and the public. The United States Embassy in Kampala also issued a level 4 travel advisory after learning of a possible Marburg case, showing how quickly an unverified signal can travel across borders and trigger caution before the epidemiology is settled.

Uganda’s last Marburg outbreak was in 2017, when WHO said the Ministry of Health notified it on October 17 and officially declared the outbreak on October 19 in Kween District. Uganda has had four previous Marburg outbreaks overall, and one account said the 2017 outbreak involved four cases and three deaths, underscoring how familiar the country is with these hemorrhagic fever responses, even if each new alert still tests its systems.

The wider regional backdrop is the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, which WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have described as geographically and operationally challenging. The U.S. CDC said that by June 22 the DRC had confirmed more than 1,000 cases, making it the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record in Central Africa, a scale that raises the stakes for fast verification in Uganda and for regional coordination before fear outruns the facts.