Three candidate vaccines against the strain of Ebola wreaking havoc in Uganda will be shipped to the East African country next week for trials, the World Health Organization, WHO, said Wednesday.
Since Uganda declared an Ebola outbreak on September 20, cases have spread across the country, including to the capital Kampala, and have claimed 55 lives, with 22 more believed to have died.
Uganda has been struggling to rein in the outbreak caused by the Sudan strain of the virus, for which there is currently no vaccine.
But UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that vaccine trials would soon begin.
Speaking from the G20 summit in Indonesia, he said a WHO committee of external experts had evaluated candidate vaccines and determined “all three should be included in the planned trial in Uganda”.
The WHO and the Ugandan health ministry accepted the committee’s recommendation, he said, adding: “We expect the first doses of vaccine to be shipped to Uganda next week.”
The WHO hailed the “incredibly fast collaboration” to reach this point.
“Since the outbreak began, the government of Uganda, together with researchers, funders, companies, regulatory authorities and other experts has been working under a global effort coordinated by WHO to accelerate the development and deployment of vaccines for use in trials,” Tedros pointed out
