Hon. Dr Chris Baryomunsi, Uganda's Minister of Health, declared the country officially Ebola-free at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala on Tuesday 28 July1. Uganda's outbreak, declared on 15 May, closes on the ministry's own figures at 20 people infected, 15 of them Congolese nationals along with four Ugandan health workers and a driver, with 18 recovered and two dead, a case-fatality rate near 10%.
The declaration lands thirty days before the end of the surveillance period WHO recorded as running. WHO's Disease Outbreak News 613, published 17 July while the events were current, states that the most recent case "was discharged from the treatment centre on 16 July after two negative tests results" and that this "marks the start of the 42-day countdown period"2. Forty-two days is twice the maximum incubation period, the interval WHO requires before an outbreak may be called over, and counted from 16 July it expires on 27 August. Lowdown's own coverage of that discharge carried the same date.
Uganda Ministry of Health dates the same discharge a month earlier. Its release says the country "discharged its last confirmed Ebola patient on 16th June 2026" and that "every identified contact completed the mandatory 21-day follow-up period without developing the disease"3. Sixteen June plus 42 days falls on 28 July exactly. Africa CDC describes something else again: its situation report says Uganda "announced that the BVD outbreak had ended prior to the 42-day countdown, as the final case was deemed imported and managed in a controlled environment"4.
Three institutions, three accounts, and no way to reconcile them from the documents themselves. Nothing in the record establishes which is wrong, and nothing in it supports an inference about motive. The verifiable core is narrow and worth stating plainly: the declaration is dated 28 July, the countdown WHO recorded contemporaneously ran to 27 August, and the two official explanations for how 28 July was permissible contradict each other. One further detail belongs beside them. WHO appears in the Ugandan release commending the response and its emergency medical teams, but no country representative is named and no joint declaration accompanies it5. An end-of-outbreak declaration usually carries the agency's signature next to the ministry's.
