KAMPALA, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Uganda has received 25,000 doses of the Ebola vaccine that will be administered in high-risk areas, the country's health authorities said here Wednesday.
Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Health, told Xinhua on the telephone that the vaccines were donated by Johnson & Johnson, an American pharmaceutical company.
Ainebyoona said the vaccination exercise will start in two months.
"We shall begin with the high-risk 20 districts, where previous outbreaks have been experienced," he said.
Uganda in August started the Ebola vaccination exercise covering 2,500 frontline health workers in the Adjumani district in its northwestern West Nile sub-region bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan.
Ministry of Health data show that between September and December 2022, the country registered a total of 142 confirmed cases of Ebola, with 56 deaths and 86 recoveries.
The epicenter of the outbreak was the central Uganda district of Mubende, with some few cases spreading to the western region.
The country declared the end of the Sudan Ebola virus disease outbreak on Jan. 11, 2023, after 42 days without any new cases reported.
Previous outbreaks in Uganda have also been recorded in border districts with eastern DRC.
