Don’t Expect COVID-19 Vaccine In the Near Future, Ministry Of Health PS Tells Why
In era where a number of countries from different continents are on final stages of developing COVID-19 vaccine to curb the pandemic, Uganda is only laying foundation for the start of the process.
Ugandans have been eager waiting to receive news from the ministry of health that their own scientists have developed a vaccine that can curb the pandemic that has put the world on standstill, the permanent secretary of the ministry, Dr. Diana Atwine revealed that Uganda might have it’s own vaccine in even 15 years from now.
At the event held at the ministry of health headquarters in Kampala on Friday, 29, January 2021, where the ministry received donation of COVID-19 protective equipments worth 2.4bn Uganda shillings from UNFPA, Atwine said its not easy to develop a vaccine and it can take years while going through a number of phases to be ready for human consumption.
“President tasked the scientists to do what they can to help in curbing down the disease, but they didn’t have the things to use” Dr. Diana “we have here the brains, we have the scientists that have studied immunology, vaccinology, we have infectious disease specialists, just we don’t have the infrastructure.”
“People are asking that why is it that the vaccine is not coming through. But to develop a vaccine, it takes years, actually one vaccine can take 15 years. So this is just one year and here we didn’t have any structure for that.
So we are just laying the foundation so that this will help us in future not just for COVID but also other infection.” Dr. Diana Atwine explained.
However on Wednesday this week, the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni launched the first clinical trial for Covid-19 at Mulago.
Today, the ministry received donation worth 2.4bn shillings, from UNFPA Uganda for the ongoing response activities in over 42 Districts, the protective gears include; surgical masks, respirators, examination, surgical gloves, liquid soap, hand sanitizers and these are mainly for frontliners in fighting COVID-19.
The equipments shall go to districts in West Nile, Acholi, Western Uganda, Karamoja.