Fri | Sep 12, 2025

Ugandan health authorities set to begin Ebola vaccine trial after new outbreak kills nurse

Published:Sunday | February 2, 2025 | 6:15 PM
FILE - A medical worker disinfects a tent used for suspected Ebola victims inside the Ebola isolation center of Madudu Health Center III, in the village of Madudu, in the Mubende district of Uganda Tuesday, November 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda, Fil
Hajarah Nalwadda
FILE - A medical worker disinfects a tent used for suspected Ebola victims inside the Ebola isolation center of Madudu Health Center III, in the village of Madudu, in the Mubende district of Uganda Tuesday, November 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda, File)

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Ugandan officials are preparing to deploy a trial vaccine as part of efforts to stem an outbreak of Ebola in the capital, Kampala, a top health official said Sunday.

A range of scientists are developing research protocols relating to the planned deployment of more than 2,000 doses of a candidate vaccine against the Sudan strain of Ebola, said Pontiano Kaleebu, executive director of Uganda Virus Research Institute.

“Protocol is being accelerated” to get all the necessary regulatory approvals, he said. “This vaccine is not yet licensed.”

The World Health Organization said in a statement that its support to Uganda’s response to the outbreak includes access to 2,160 doses of trial vaccine.

“Research teams have been deployed to the field to work along with the surveillance teams as approvals are awaited,” the WHO statement said.

The candidate vaccine as well as candidate treatments are being made available through clinical trial protocols to further test for efficacy and safety, it said.

The vaccine maker wasn’t immediately known. There are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola that killed a nurse employed at Kampala’s main referral hospital. The man died on Wednesday and authorities declared an outbreak the next day. Officials are still investigating the source of the outbreak, and there has been no other confirmed case.

Uganda has had access to candidate vaccine doses since the end of an Ebola outbreak in September 2022 that killed at least 55 people. Ugandan officials ran out of time to begin a vaccine study when that outbreak, in central Uganda, was declared over about four months later, Kaleebu said.

A trial vaccine known as rVSV-ZEBOV, used to vaccinate 3,000 people at risk of infection during an outbreak of the Zaire strain of Ebola in eastern Congo between 2018 and 2020, proved effective in containing the spread of the disease there.

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