HEALTH FOCUS: Uganda’s race to contain Ebola

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:03][music] >> Uganda's latest Ebola outbreak has entered a more worrying phase with the Ministry of Health confirming local transmission among health workers who came into contact with the index case.

[00:00:19]Out of the nine confirmed cases so far, three infections were acquired within the country including two health workers and a driver who transported the original patient.

[00:00:28]>> Local transmission is beyond the imported when the local person in the country gets Ebola.

[00:00:37]>> The Ministry of Health is now urging medical personnel to strengthen information sharing and limit movement between multiple health facilities to reduce exposure risks.

[00:00:46]>> Yeah, we we we we actually we met them.

[00:00:49]We met the health workers.

[00:00:51]We met the directors of the hospitals.

[00:00:54]We must desist from moonlighting but also share information to keep information, you know, open because if we do that, we'll So so we we are in constant discussion with our with our people to make sure that they observe that. Otherwise, they are [snorts] putting themselves to to to to to more risks by moving from one place to to to to another.

[00:01:18]>> The heightened surveillance comes as the Ministry of Health emphasizes the importance of the 21-day monitoring period, the maximum incubation period for the virus.

[00:01:28]>> And they start developing symptoms like fever, abdominal pain, headache, general weakness, vomiting, diarrhea, they are highly infectious.

[00:01:42]>> But scientists are also drawing attention to a lesser-known challenge, Ebola's ability to remain hidden in survivors long after recovery.

[00:01:50]>> People who previously got infected can keep the live virus in areas which we call privileged sites. These are areas where the body's immune system cannot reach. So, the it is difficult for the body to clear the virus from there. For example, in the testes, the the the virus can hide in the in the seminal fluid eh of a man in the testes eh.

[00:02:16]Uh the for a long time for really a long time.

[00:02:22]And uh by long time we have followed up people up to 3 years and he's still secreting virus.

[00:02:29]Uh but there's also data we've seen uh coming from studies that were done previously that showed that some of the animals we live with, the goats, the the chicken, the the the the the the they are seropositive for uh Ebola virus. It means that in addition to the human beings, in addition to the other things, even the animals that we domesticate, the farm animals, could potentially be intermediate hosts that could cause infection. All these things are very possible.

[00:03:07]>> Despite advances in Ebola research over the past decade, experts say outbreaks involving rare strains such as Bundibugyo virus still face significant challenges due to limited vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics.

[00:03:21]>> Until we had the 2013 to 2016 outbreak in West Africa, which expanded and went at the international level, the interest in investing in the development of countermeasures was very limited.

[00:03:38]It is until Ebola in West Africa went to Europe, went to the US, that people began to take this seriously. That is when we saw the drive to invest in the development of vaccines, development of diagnostics, development of therapeutics. In West Africa, we saw the for the first time ever uh clinical trials uh which were evaluating vaccine candidates which led to the approval of two vaccines.

[00:04:13]>> Scientists are hopeful that the existing experimental vaccines and therapies may offer some protection but stress that early detection remains the strongest defense.

[00:04:23]>> The J&J vaccine was designed such that its initial its two dose.

[00:04:31]And its initial uh what we call the the the the first dose not the booster one.

[00:04:41]It it has a little bit wider spectrum.

[00:04:46]So uh and it could potentially uh have some uh uh um some of the antigens for Ebola Bundibugyo in it.

[00:05:04]At this point, the key thing is to make sure that the compassionate use protocols which WHO luckily enough developed which we call them the MUREs uh the MURE protocol uh uh approved within the countries where this outbreak is happening. So that some of these can be deployed and we we can see we we see how it works. We we have very interesting data from 2025 which shows that even the drug which was not approved in the West African outbreak, remdesivir potentially has some benefits.

[00:05:42]Uh of course, that is something to to to still look at in depth because the strain that caused the 2025 outbreak of Sudan Ebola virus was different from the one that caused the 2022 outbreak.

[00:05:58]I think that the solution to this would be for us to have tests that are cheap, affordable, point-of-care tests which cost very little money that anybody who comes in with a fever, we can test them.

[00:06:12]>> As Uganda intensifies surveillance and contact tracing efforts, health officials are urging the public to report symptoms early and avoid contact with suspected cases warning that vigilance remains the country's most powerful weapon against the deadly virus.

[00:06:29]Walter Mwesigye NTV >> [music]