The Ugandan government on Thursday received a bath of more than 4,000 doses of Ebola vaccines for a clinical trial to assess their protection against the Sudan strain of the virus that led to the death of over 50 people in the latest outbreak, reported The Africa News.
The World Health Organization (WHO) handed more than 4,000 doses of Ebola trial vaccines to Ugandan officials on Thursday — 2,000 of the Indian Serum Institute’s Oxford vaccine and just over 2,000 from U.S.-based vaccine manufacturer Merck. An initial 1,000 doses were received from the U.S.’s Sabin Vaccine Institute last week.
Notably, three candidate vaccines, one developed by the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute in Britain, another from the Sabin Vaccine Institute in the United States, and a third from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), will be trialled in Uganda in the coming weeks.
On Thursday, Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng told reporters that the government will be organizing a global expert consultation on Jan. 12 to determine when the trials should start.
Since the outbreak was declared in September, Uganda has reported a total of 142 Ebola cases so far including 56 deaths. The outbreak has been caused by the Sudan strain of the virus, which has no proven vaccine.
The Ugandan health minister said the trials of the vaccine will be voluntary, and they will not be used outside the trials.
Last week, the Ugandan government lifted a two-month long lockdown in two districts at the centre of the country’s Ebola outbreak. According to the WHO, the fatality rate of the current Ebola outbreak is about 40%.
The statement from the Ugandan health minister comes at a time when the WHO is expected to declare the Uganda outbreak over if no new cases are reported. According to WHO guidelines, an outbreak is declared over if there are no new infections within 42 days.
