The World Health Organisation (WHO) representative in Uganda, Dr. Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, says experimental Ebola vaccines will be introduced in Uganda in about two weeks, as the East African nation recently implemented strict preventive measures, including a lockdown in the Ebola-affected districts.
According to Dr. Woldemariam, hundreds of thousands of experimental vaccine doses will support a response effort that must still concentrate on identifying Ebola contacts and involving the community.
“We are getting closer and closer to deploying vaccines,” he said on Wednesday in a statement cited by pharmanewsonline. “This is a study. This is just another tool that we are going to try.”
Uganda was finalizing study protocols before the National Drug Authority provides import permissions, he said, adding that vaccines created by Oxford University and the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a U.S.-based company, “are ready to be transported” to Uganda.
Pharmanewsonline reports that Uganda has seen several Ebola epidemics, including one in 2000 that claimed more than 200 lives. More than 11,000 individuals died from the Ebola virus between 2014 and 2016, which is the highest death toll ever recorded for the disease.
Contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids or contaminated objects is how Ebola is transmitted. Fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle soreness, and occasionally internal and external bleeding are some of the symptoms.
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