Uganda's Ebola responders fret as some people fight measures

KASSANDA, Uganda (AP) — The recent explosion of Ebola virus cases in a Ugandan rural community began when defiant residents exhumed a body at night, undoing the work of a safe burial team in order to give the deceased man a proper Islamic funeral.

Within days, at least 23 of the mourners had contracted Ebola and three were dead, prompting Uganda's health minister to say she hoped the members of the farming community in the district of Kassanda had learnt their lesson.

But it seems not everyone had.

In a recent community discussion of the challenges health teams face in combating the current outbreak of a strain of Ebola with no proven vaccine, the district's Ebola incident commander cited pockets of resistance to health measures.

Another official spoke of people who hide in the shrines of traditional healers — who are temporarily banned from working amid the outbreak — and another complained about youths unhappy with restrictions on movement who throw stones at patrol vehicles.

Ebola, which can sometimes manifest as a hemorrhagic fever, arrived here from Uganda's neighboring district of Mubende in October, as patients crossed valleys and hills to seek treatment. Others didn't even know they were infected. The early symptoms — including fever, fatigue and muscle pain — can often be mistaken for those of malaria or measles. But failing to isolate infectious patients can have fatal consequences.

When Ebola patients or their contacts are highly mobile, it's harder to trace them and new clusters can emerge. At least two people sick with Ebola traveled 150 kilometers (93) miles from this central Ugandan region to Kampala, the capital, where authorities have voiced serious concern after 15 people there — including six schoolchildren — were infected.

Ebola has infected 130...