Agency
The Ministry of Health has started rolling out the Ebola Sudan Trial Vaccine to high-risk populations following the recent outbreak in Uganda.
This comes after the country registered its eighth outbreak of the Ebola Sudan strain, in which a health worker from Mulago Hospital succumbed to the disease.
Prof Bruce Kirenga, the trial’s principal investigator, stated that there are 2,460 doses of the vaccine available, which are being administered under a clinical trial.
Participants, who are contacts of confirmed cases, must provide informed consent after fully understanding the information about the vaccine before voluntarily participating.
Kirenga added that the available vaccine is still under trial and does not yet have an official name but is code-named RVSV or V921.
It is specifically designed to target the current strain of Ebola Sudan.
There are several strains of the Ebola virus, including Ebola Zaire, which already has a licensed vaccine.
However, the Ebola Sudan strain, responsible for the current outbreak, does not yet have a licensed vaccine for outbreak response.
Additionally, Kirenga noted that Uganda has the J&J vaccine, which offers protection against Ebola Zaire and a partial response to Ebola Sudan.
