Words by GOLD newsdesk
A collective effort to support the Ugandan Government’s response to the recent Ebolavirus outbreak in the country has been announced by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the World Health Organization (WHO).
This agreement will see the agencies accelerate research and work to ensure access to investigational doses of treatment during the outbreak, as well as facilitate the scaling and access to any subsequently licensed vaccines.
Currently, there are no licensed vaccines of therapeutics for Ebola disease caused by the Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV) – the variant of concern during the current outbreak – though several candidates could be suitable for evaluation in clinical trials.
The collective has set out goals for its collaboration, which include supporting the ministry of health of Uganda in its outbreak response efforts, allocating resources to plan for sufficient manufacturing capacity for candidate vaccines, and exploring pathways to ensure licensed SUDV vaccines are available via the Ebola stockpile – enabled and funded by GAVI and managed by UNICEF on behalf of WHO.
The outbreak’s epicentre sits in the Mubende district but has since spread to six other districts. There were 115 confirmed cases of Ebolavirus in Uganda as of 26 October, and the number of confirmed deaths sat at 32.
