Ebola spreads due to shortage of medical staff in Uganda; vaccine roll out in 2 weeks: WHO

Nearly a month after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Ebola as an outbreak in Uganda, it said the shortage of health workers in the country has fueled the spread of the virus. During a WHO summit, its Regional Director for Africa Dr Matshidiso Moeti, underscored that the virus has been spreading in a peripheral area before it was detected in the central region. According to her, the abrupt reports of the outbreak came as the shortage of healthcare staff made it hard to identify the spread of any virus in remote regions. Moreover, she said those associated with community health workers failed to pick up on and report unusual patterns of disease. 

Notably, the UN World Health Organisation, earlier in September, declared that a sample taken from a 24-year-old man was identified as the relatively rare Sudan strain. It is the first time in more than a decade that the Sudan strain has been found in Uganda, which also saw an outbreak of the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus in 2019. Initially, the outbreak follows six suspicious deaths in the Mubende district, but the number soon rose to 23. According to the International Rescue Committee, there were up to 60 cases as of Monday. It warned the risk of the virus spreading to neighbouring countries is high. In order to restrict the spread of the virus, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Saturday announced a 21-day lockdown of two of the districts.

WHO says experimental Ebola vaccines will be deployed in the next two weeks

It is worth mentioning Ebola is a severe, often fatal illness affecting humans and other primates. It has six different strains, three of which - Bundibugyo, Sudan and Zaire - have previously caused large outbreaks. Case fatality rates of the Sudan strain have varied from 41 per cent to 100 per cent in past outbreaks.

Existing vaccines against Ebola have proved effective against the Zaire strain but it is not clear if they will be as successful against the Sudan strain, WHO said in a statement. According to WHO, the early roll-out of supportive treatment has been shown to significantly reduce deaths from Ebola. On Wednesday, a WHO official told the news agency Associated Press that experimental Ebola vaccines will be deployed in Uganda in about “two weeks." “We are getting closer and closer to deploying vaccines,” Dr Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, the WHO representative in Uganda, told the news agency. “This is a study. This is just another tool that we are going to try," he added.