Government has said that no Ugandan will be forced to take part in the trials of the ebola vaccine, which exercise is slated to start in two weeks.
The Minister of Health, Jane Ruth Aceng (pictured) made the remarks while responding to a question posed by John Baptist Nambeshe (Majiya County) who tasked the Ministry of health to explain if the trials on the new ebola virus will entail seeking consent of participants.
“The trial preparations that you are conducting would mean that our people are being subjected to experimental confirmatory tests without going through normal procedure of consent and these would mean that you are treating our people like gene pigs. That would be in violation and absolute breach of the rights that these people are entitled to.” Nambeshe asked,
In response, Minister Aceng said that the reason why there is a vaccine for ebola Zaire is because such trials were conducted in west Africa because it is usually pertinent that whenever an outbreak, researchers take the opportunity to quickly conduct trials so that in future, governments have something to protect the population.
In the latest case, ebola Sudan is only in Uganda and South Sudan and the latest outbreak in Mubende provides a very good opportunity to conduct trials.
“The trial preparations includes conducting protocols, getting consent, putting in place refrigerators and many other things. Any contact to a confirmed case will consent, nobody will give them a vaccine without consent. The same we did when we got ebola Zaire crossing over from DRC. So we aren’t using anybody as a gene pig we are requiring consent,” said Aceng.
While issuing a statement to Parliament on the status update on the ebola virus disease outbreak and containment measures, Margaret Muhanga, Minister fo state for Health (Primary Health Care) highlighted that whereas there is no known treatment for Sudan Ebola virus, there are a number of promising treatment options that the Ministry of Health is using under trial, including monoclonal antibodies, and repurposed drugs like Remdesevir donated by the US Government.
Minister Muhanga said, “However, the doses available are still very few. So far 13 patients have received these trial drugs with relatively good outcomes. Four patients admitted in critical condition succumbed, emphasising the importance of early reporting and hence treatment. Another request has been submitted to the USA government for more of the trial drugs.” She also revealed that the Ministry of Health will be evaluating the efficacy of three candidate Ebola Sudan vaccines on contacts in the coming weeks and these include; Oxford from the United Kingdom, Sabin from the USA and Merck from the USA.
According to the Ministry, the trials are intended to evaluate their efficacy to protect primary contacts of Ebola patients within 29 days of contact we plan to vaccinate contacts of 150 confirmed cases (3000) initially.
“The trial preparation has been concluded and we estimate that we may begin the trial in two weeks’ time,” said Muhanga.
Government also revealed that three Ebola Treatment facilities have been set up in Mubende District including a 42 bed capacity treatment facility at the Regional Referral Hospital, another 42 bed-capacity Ebola Treatment facility at the district’s grounds, while the third treatment facility is at the original outbreak epicenter Madudu with an 8 bed capacity.
While in Kampala Metropolitan area, Government has set up two permanent treatment facilities in Mulago National Referral Hospital and Entebbe municipality.
The Mulago Ebola Treatment facllity is a 120-bed facility that is separate from Mulago National Referral Hospital and is currently housing the 22 quarantined contacts from Kampala and Wakiso.
The second Ebola Treatment facility is the Entebbe National isolation center in Entebbe Municipality, carrying a capacity of 67 beds with 8 ICU beds.
The Ministry of Health is also planning to set up an additional treatment facility in Mulago sports field and this 64 bed-capacity facility will be built in two phases over a period of 4 weeks.
