Russia’s consumer health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor will send specialists to Africa to help fight the Ebola outbreak and will supply Russian-developed diagnostic tests, the agency said after a new outbreak of the mutating disease was recorded in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said he and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had discussed the supply of Russian vaccines to the DRC and Uganda in the context of the Ebola outbreak.
“Specialists are already deploying to provide assistance. We discussed this with Dr Tedros, the head of the World Health Organisation,” Murashko said.
The WHO, for its part, recently said it was ready to start clinical trials of vaccines against the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus in the DRC, but that the final decision rested with the authorities.
Anne Ancia, the WHO’s representative in the DRC, later said that clinical trials would take place, but that which vaccines and which molecules would be decided during a WHO meeting.
At the end of last week, the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC a public health emergency of international concern. This week, experts warned of the risk of a new pandemic. In their view, the world would be even less prepared for it than it was for COVID-19, owing to geopolitical fragmentation, debt burdens and declining healthcare investment.