It essentially liquefies its victims from within, breaking down the linings of their blood vessels and organs and causing some to bleed from every orifice. While 71 cases have been counted officially in Gulu thus far, much illness likely remains hidden in this region of few physicians and poor communications. In Gulu, they are looking especially closely at Africa's latest intersection of war and disease. The infrastructure is just limping. The government is not functioning much.
Health care is mostly nongovernmental organizations and churches.
When men working an abandoned gold mine in the town of Durba began vomiting blood and dying by the dozens in late 1998, a doctor named Bonzali Katanga suspected either Ebola or its cousin, the Marburg virus. As the government's district health officer, Bonzali did his duty, even though Congolese rebels, rather than any government, controlled his district. For four months, Bonzali tried to raise the alarm, in urgent radio reports to his provincial superiors in Kisangani. But in Congo, where only two of 11 provincial health inspectors have even a working vehicle, the health system has barely existed since the 1980s. Bonzali's superiors responded only when he died.