MOH to Vaccinate 25,000 Against Ebola in Twenty Districts

The Ministry of Health (MOH) announced on Wednesday that it is launching an Ebola viral disease prevention campaign aimed at vaccinating 25,000 individuals in twenty districts identified as high-risk areas. This initiative is part of the government’s ongoing efforts to combat the spread of the virus and safeguard public health. 

The exercise which begins this morning targets to include as a priority health workers, armed forces, refugees, immigration personnel, traditional healers, and traditional birth attendants who will receive a dose of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine component known as Zabdeno. This drug targets the Zaire Ebola virus. 

According to Dr. Charles Olaro, the Director of Curative Services in the Ministry of Health, the same group of people who will receive this vaccine in the current campaign will get another jab of a vaccine component known as Mvabea as a second dose starting on the 23rd of November 2024.  

Uganda has now active Ebola outbreak currently having been declared disease-free in January 2023 following an outbreak in September 2022 in the central Uganda districts of Mubende, Kassanda, and Kyegegwa.  This was the seventh Ebola outbreak in the country and the first time in more than a decade, of the highly virulent Sudan Virus Disease (SVD) strain. 

Olaro says while Uganda has no active outbreak, the country still needs protection as it’s located close to the Congo Basin where outbreaks are more likely to happen. He fears that Uganda can at any moment import cases from the neighbors, as evidenced in the 2019 outbreak in DRC. This campaign is being implemented by the Infectious Diseases Institute and the National Drug Authority will oversee surveillance. 

This drug has previously been used in prevention campaigns in the neighboring DR Congo and Rwanda. The 20 districts involved are those on the borderline from the West Nile up to Kisoro.