Nine cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant have been detected in the country. This is according to results released by the Uganda Virus Research Institute. The results were of samples of travelers that were tested at Entebbe International Airport. Prof Pontiano Kaleebu, the Executive Director of UVRI says the cases were detected among travelers from…
At least 5,000 teenage girls have been conceived in the Katakwi district since October 2020. A new report released by the Senior District Probation Officer in Katakwi, Betty Angiro indicates that more than 7,000 teenage pregnancies have been recorded in Katakwi between January 2020 and September 2021. The report shows that there is an increase…
The Ministry of Health will now distribute Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to hard to reach areas, according to Health Minister Dr Jane Ruth Aceng. She says that the single-shot jab will be preserved for residents of Karamoja, as well as the islands of Kalangala and Buvuma, among other hard to reach areas. Uganda has…
The prolonged closure of Entebbe Regional Referral Hospital has irked residents. The hospital closed the outpatient, dental, optical, maternal and child care departments in March last year to focus on the management of COVID-19 patients. Before its closure, the hospital served more than a million people from within Entebbe municipality, Katabi Town council, Buvuma and…
Disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in considerable increases in malaria cases and deaths between 2019 and 2020, according to the annual World Malaria Report released this evening by the World Health Organization (WHO). Using a new methodology that analyses the causes of death for children under the age of five across all diseases*,…
The Opposition in Parliament has tasked the government to undertake necessary measures to detect and prevent the spread of the new Omicron variant of Covid-19. The new Covid-19 variant is reported to have originated in South Africa and spread to different countries. It has sent different countries across the world in panic and it has…
The International AIDS Society has highlighted key areas that researchers should focus on in their quest to find an HIV cure, as the world marks World AIDS Day today. Listing understanding HIV reservoirs, HIV reservoir measurement, mechanisms of virus control, targeting the immune system in addition to Cell and gene therapy as top on agenda…
Two of the four COVID-19 vaccines currently developed in Uganda are reaching the animal trial phase, while one other is one stage away. The vaccines manufactured under the Presidential Scientific Initiative on Epidemics (PRESIDE), an initiative of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni are using different technologies; One is using the ChAdOx1 also known as the Adenovirus-vectored technology, …
Despite being the most ill-planned exercise executed by the Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunization (UNEPI), the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination is the most expensive campaign carried out in the last ten years, according to officials. In the past four years, Uganda has carried out at least two mass vaccination campaigns including the Measles/Rubella and Polio…
Doctors have warned of an increase in resistance to common antifungal drugs used for the treatment of infections like candidiasis. Drug-resistant tuberculosis is also a growing phenomenon, while malaria parasites also are becoming resistant to once-effective first-line anti-malarial treatments. The World Health Organisation has already warned that over four million Africans a year could die as…