KAMPALA (Reuters) – A shipment of Ebola vaccine candidates set to be utilized in a clinical trial have arrived in Uganda, where an outbreak has infected 142 people and killed a minimum of 56, health authorities said on Thursday.
Last week Uganda said it had discharged its last Ebola patient from hospital, raising hopes for the tip of an outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic fever declared on September 20.
Health ministry spokesman Emmanuel Ainebyoona said the vaccine candidates had arrived, and added that the health minister was expected to announce the beginning date of trials afterward Thursday.
There are currently no licensed vaccines for the Sudan strain of the virus that caused the infections in Uganda, although there are several candidate vaccines that seem like suitable for evaluation, the World Health Organization says.
The WHO has said it might send three vaccine candidates to Uganda to be utilized in a trial, one by the University of Oxford and Serum Institute of India, one other by the Sabin Vaccine Institute and a 3rd by Merck & Co Inc.
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Existing vaccines combat the more common Zaire strain, which spread during recent outbreaks within the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ebola causes vomiting, diarrhoea, and bleeding from all body orifices, and spreads through contact with the bodily fluids of those infected.
Health officials have previously said every little thing was in place for the trials to begin and so they were only waiting for the doses to reach.
(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Hereward Holland and Clarence Fernandez)
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