By Andrea Hargraves 
The World Health Organization (WHO) has teamed up with the Ugandan Ministry of Health to support Ebola vaccine trials due to the outbreak of the disease in the country.
The Ministry of Health has appointed the Makerere University Pulmonary Institute to conduct clinical trials of vaccines and treatments and you will be an investigator from the Ugandan Foundation to lead the vaccine trial.
The Coalition for Epidemiological Innovations (CEPI) and the Alliance for Vaccines (Gavi) provide support to ensure that adequate doses of candidate vaccines are available for testing.
If adequate doses are ensured, the aim of the trial will be to demonstrate the efficacy of candidate vaccines in different populations.
Among the vaccine laboratories and funders who will provide the candidate drugs are the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, the Sabin Vaccine Institute and US Government Institutions, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and MSD .
Other organizations committed to supporting the global response are the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), NGOs, donors and regulators such as the African Regulatory Forum on African Vaccines. (AVAREF, in English acronym).
Among the specific short-term objectives, it aims to support the Ugandan Ministry of Health’s efforts to respond to the outbreak as needed to bring the epidemiological situation under control and, under its leadership, support a randomized clinical trial to evaluate one or more candidate vaccines. As part of the answer.
In the medium term, the intention is to allocate resources to planning and maintaining sufficient manufacturing capacity to scale up candidate vaccine production (even before they are licensed), which could lead to the establishment of a risk-sharing mechanism.
This may also include compromising additional vaccines during testing to ensure that doses of vaccine considered effective can be made available to end the outbreak as quickly as possible.
In the longer term, the goal is to explore ways to ensure availability of licensed vaccines through the Gavi-funded Ebola Vaccine Pipeline managed by UNICEF on behalf of the International Coordinating Group (ICG) mechanism. in English) at the World Health Organization regarding coordinated delivery of vaccines, using potentially innovative market-shaping mechanisms.
Actions by the Ugandan Ministry of Health and its partners build on past collaboration and experience responding to an outbreak of the Zaire Ebola variant, lessons learned from COVAX, and experience with other vaccine delivery mechanisms.
Uganda declared an Ebola virus outbreak on September 20, several days after the infectious disease began spreading in a rural farming community, the first time this species – one of six in the genus Ebolavirus – has been detected in the country since 2012.
The virus was discovered in 1976, after it was identified in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, near a village along the Ebola River, which is what the virus is named after.
Since then, Uganda has experienced several Ebola outbreaks, including an outbreak of the Ebola virus in 2000 that killed more than 200 people. The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the highest death toll ever.
The Ebola virus is spread by contact with an infected person’s body fluids or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle aches, and sometimes internal and external bleeding.