World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that three Ebola vaccine candidates for a planned clinical study will be transported to Uganda the next week.
Among the candidates are vaccines in development by the University of Oxford, the Serum Institute of India, the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and Merck & Co. (MRK.N).
Tedros stated that the council of external specialists for the global health organization has assessed and agreed to include all three vaccine candidates in the scheduled study.
In contrast to the more prevalent Zaire strain, which spread during recent outbreaks in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, there is no vaccine for the Sudan variant of Ebola that is circulating in Uganda.
The WHO did not share information regarding the number of dosages anticipated to be sent or utilized in the proposed trial.
The WHO did not share information regarding the number of dosages anticipated to be sent or utilized in the proposed trial.
This report comes at a time when Ugandan doctors are facing Ebola-related anxiety and shortages. In September, when Ebola first appeared in Uganda, ten doctors volunteered to work in an isolation unit at Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital, but today just three remain.
Staff is hesitant to work in the unit out of fear of contracting the fatal hemorrhagic fever, as well as due to weariness and delayed wages, according to one of the three, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.
Two healthcare workers at a hospital in western Uganda have died from Ebola-related illnesses. 15 healthcare professionals have tested positive nationwide, and six of them have died.
The strain of Ebola spreading in Uganda is the Sudan strain, for which there is no established vaccine. 141 instances have been reported, including 55 deaths.
“At first, a large number of health care professionals were willing to work in that unit, but now we have inadequate coverage. If we receive five instances, our workload becomes unbearable,” explained the physician.
“But if we all run away, we will all get sick,” the doctor remarked, adding that the hospital occasionally lacked crucial treatment fluids.
Uganda has one of the lowest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world, with one doctor per 25,000 people, compared to the World Health Organization’s recommended ratio of one doctor per 1,000 people (WHO).
The World Health Organization and relief organizations are giving Uganda support to combat the Ebola outbreak, while the United States has reportedly provided $22 million through local partners.
Yet Uganda still confronts serious financing shortages; a WHO official reported that the government’s initial $20 million allocation was depleted in the first month as the number of cases skyrocketed.
The incident commander for the Ugandan Ministry of Health, Dr. Henry Kyobe Bosa, disputed the existence of staff or resource constraints. Intensive care professionals work a maximum of eight-hour shifts, and personnel from Ebola-free regions rotates in, he explained.
But staff coverage was 40% prior to the outbreak, and Ebola is now “indirectly harming the system,” according to Dr. Alone Nahabwe, the chief of worker welfare for the Uganda Medical Association.
He stated that employees lack personal safety equipment such as face shields, gowns, gloves, and gumboots.
“There are places where doctors and healthcare staff continue to contact patients without gloves due to a lack of gloves,” said Nahabwe.
After a turbulent start, government authorities claim the situation is improving. Compared to a 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed at least 11,300 people, the number of cases remains low.
Bosa stated, “We do not have a large number of cases, so we can handle them.” The one significant concern we have is that instances will reach Kampala.
Twenty cases have been verified so far in the capital, which is home to over two million people.
At the isolation facility in Mubende district, the epicenter of the outbreak, one doctor reported that PPE and staffing shortages had eased as the number of cases declined: in his unit, only 12 of 60 beds were occupied last week, compared to 48 at the height.
However, specialists are concerned about the spread of diseases. The first case was reported in the country’s eastern region on Sunday.
“The number of personnel required for IPC (infection, prevention, and control), surveillance, and contact tracing is substantial,” said Miriam Nanyunja, a WHO emergency risk management advisor presently in Uganda.
“Although the number of cases is low, their geographic distribution is expanding,” she noted. “Much greater mobilization of resources will be required if the situation persists for an extended period.”
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