Ebola trial vaccines heading to Uganda

GENEVA: Three candidate vaccines against the strain of Ebola wreaking havoc in Uganda will be shipped to the East African country next week for trials, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

Since Uganda declared an Ebola outbreak on Sept 20, cases have spread across the country, including to the capital Kampala, and have claimed 55 lives, with 22 more believed to have died.

Uganda has been struggling to rein in the outbreak caused by the Sudan strain of the virus.

But UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that vaccine trials would soon begin.

Speaking from the G20 summit in Indonesia, he said a WHO committee of external experts had evaluated candidate vaccines and determined “all three should be included in the planned trial in Uganda”.

The WHO and the Ugandan health ministry accepted the committee’s recommendation, he said, adding: “We expect the first doses of vaccine to be shipped to Uganda next week.”