A health worker holds a thermometer toward each person waiting outside Kibuli Muslim Hospital, Kampala. The photo is from May 16, and it captures the mood across the region: Ebola is back, and nobody is taking chances.
Ten days later, Moscow made a claim of its own. On May 26 Russia’s embassy in South Africa posted on X that scientists at home had built a vaccine for a newly emerged Ebola strain. The post named Health Minister Mikhail Murashko as the one who announced it. The embassy, citing the scientists, said the vaccine “may also protect against the rare Bundibugyo strain” tied to the Congo outbreak.
Note the word “may.” The post offers a hope, not a result.
The hope lands in an empty field. No licensed vaccine or therapy exists for Ebola illness from the Bundibugyo virus, a haemorrhagic fever that kills a high share of those it infects.
An outbreak that keeps outrunning the response
On May 17 the World Health Organization, acting under the International Health Regulations of 2005, declared the Ebola outbreaks in Congo and Uganda an international public health emergency. Africa CDC declared its own, continental-scale emergency over the same outbreak.
On May 22 its emergency committee issued temporary recommendations. Entry points should screen and manage any traveller arriving with an unexplained fever from places where Bundibugyo virus has turned up, and people should steer clear of those places. Countries bordering Congo and Uganda, South Sudan included, are rated as high-risk for transmission.
The toll in Congo is already heavy. IBNS, an Indian news service, puts the count there at over 900 suspected infections and roughly 220 suspected deaths, with seven lab-confirmed cases across the border in Uganda. Health workers cannot keep up, the WHO says; the disease is moving ahead of them.
Even aviation is watching. The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization told governments and airlines to follow the WHO recommendations strictly, while insisting that flying between countries remains safe.
Sources
- Russia developed vaccine against new Ebola strain: Health Minister Murashko
- Africa Ebola crisis: Russia claims breakthrough vaccine that can offer protection against deadly Bundibugyo strain (IBNS/Indiablooms)
