Uganda needs Ugx 28b to contain Ebola- Ministry of Health

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Uganda needs USD 7.5 million ( 28 billion Shillings) to tackle the current Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Kasese district.

Ministry of Health (MOH) spokesperson Emmanuel Ainebyoona says funding is the biggest component of Uganda’s Ebola response as the country remains on high alert with teams of experts patrolling communities until both Uganda and the neighbouring Democratic Republic Congo (DRC) are declared Ebola-free. DRC has been battling Ebola since August, last year.

The money is needed to among others, cater for case management, surveillance, laboratory research, risk communication and community mobilization in addition to logistics like supplies and transport.

Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng had earlier hinted that the Ugandan government spent 10 billion Shillings by December 2018 and 18 billion Shillings in total for the whole preparedness phase, long before the first case of Ebola was confirmed within the Ugandan territory.

The minister said that the expenditure was necessary because even if none of the nine previous outbreaks of Ebola in DRC had spiralled to Uganda, the World Health Organization had assessed it as a very high risk this time considering that the outbreak happened at the border with Uganda.

This money she said was spent on, among others, surveillance, screening, training and vaccinating of health workers. Aceng feared that if not a lot energy was put into prevention and preparedness, the country was likely to suffer immensely quoting the West African example where because of the huge investment that went into control over the two years of the outbreak, the three countries – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are still just recovering from the shock.

On his part, the WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who made a stopover in Uganda yesterday while on his way to DRC to assess response to the outbreak called upon more donors to contribute to the response which he said might be greatly affected by lack of funding.

The European Union has already released emergency funding worth 2.5 million euros (10.4 billion Shillings), towards rapid detection and reaction to cases. In total, since last year, the EU said they had provided funds worth 17 million euros (71 billion Shillings) both in response in DRC and Preparedness in Uganda and South Sudan.

Commenting about their contribution, Maine Doody the head of cooperation at the Embassy of Ireland told journalists that her government is providing Uganda with 1 million euros (4 billion Shillings) worth of support.

However, in a statement on the WHO website, Tedros had last week said that of the USD 54 million (201 billion Shillings), the organization’s partners have promised, only USD 43.6 million (162 billion Shillings) had been received so far to cater for the ongoing outbreak in the region.

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