By Henry Mugenyi
In what might turn out to be a ray of hope; Uganda is expected to receive her first batch of Ebola vaccines and drugs in the course of next week.
This was revealed by Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the Minister of Health during the High-level Ministerial meeting on cross-border Collaboration for Preparedness and Response to Ebola Virus Disease at Speke Resort Munyonyo.
The current Ebola Sudan strain that is ravaging Uganda has no approved vaccines at the moment and those that are going to be shipped in, will be for trial purposes.
“We expect 171 doses of the Oxford vaccine and about 300 of the Sebin type, these are really small, but we expect to get more batches in November,” Aceng said.
It is now more than three weeks since Uganda reported her first case of Ebola virus in Mubende which has claimed 19 lives according to statistics from the ministry of Health.
It’s against this background that the ministry of health and partners are revising means of flying in vaccines.
The vaccines expected to touch base in the country next week, are from Oxford Vaccine Group that has continued to make major strides to Ebola vaccine development.
In his recent address on the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, Museveni confirmed that there is no case of Ebola in Kampala, and said that the recent death at Kiruddu was of a patient who had arrived from Mubende.
The president said that the vaccines will go to frontline health workers and most affected districts.
With fears of cross border transmissions of the highly infectious disease, the ministry of health together with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the African Union (AU) have organized an emergency meeting to find ways to curb the spread.
The one-day meeting held in Kampala, ended with a focus on strengthening and enhancing collaboration and coordination for cross boarder preparedness and response to the ongoing Ebola virus disease.
