00:00Well, after successfully ending its Ebola outbreak, what lessons can be learned from how Uganda managed to eliminate the disease?
00:08The country was at risk of the virus spreading after 20 cases were recorded, leading to two deaths.
00:15The authorities managed to contain the threat, despite infection spreading in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
00:23Eguara Oboko is a Ugandan doctor, researcher and health policy expert.
00:28I think the biggest success has been learning from our previous nine outbreaks on how to curb further spread of
00:39Ebola.
00:40Our biggest intervention, I think, was to do what we call forward deployment, going to the DRC and providing diagnostic
00:50support.
00:51Two mobile labs were provided by the East African community and an Ebola treatment unit of about 80 beds together
00:59with staff.
00:59I think that was the most important intervention because we realized this was important cases of Ebola.
01:05Fifteen out of the twenty were important of the cases, meaning that the Congolese preferred to come to Uganda for
01:13treatment.
01:13So we took the treatment to them in the spirit of the East African community.
01:19I think for me that was the biggest success here.
01:23Of course, Uganda has a robust diagnostic capacity for what you call viral hemorrhagic fevers, Ebola, Mabag, and so on
01:32and so forth.
01:33And we have built that over time.
01:35We have regional centers of excellence at the Uganda Virus Research Institute, which is celebrating 90 years today, having started
01:42as a yellow fever treatment facility back in 1937.
01:47So you can see that Uganda really has had its experience.
01:51Although, of course, we've had our biggest lesson learned what we call the reputation tax.
01:56But even if we had only 20 Ebola cases and two deaths, which is a very low case fatality rate
02:03of 10 percent, the negative impact on the cancellations for tourism, for instance, and the reputation, you know, including a
02:15level four travel advisory by the United States, which gives us the biggest number of tourism inflows, has been big.
02:22And, of course, we had to cancel certain local events, the biggest religious gathering called the Uganda Matters pilgrimage here
02:31in Kampala was canceled.
02:33And there was lots of loss of business and income there.
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