Global Fund Approves Nearly $1 Million for Uganda’s Mpox Response – Press Releases

Global Fund Approves Nearly $1 Million for Uganda’s Smallpox Response

September 25, 2024

– At the request of the Government of Uganda, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) has approved a reinvestment of $850,683 to boost the country’s capability to forestall, detect and reply to the present MPox epidemic by purchasing essential diagnostic laboratory supplies. Part of the funds can even be allocated to diagnostics through wastewater surveillance.

Long-standing support from the Global Fund for Uganda’s laboratory services and the National Health Laboratories and Diagnostic Services (UNHLDS) has helped the country develop the most effective national laboratory networks on the continent, with a track record of rapidly identifying and containing disease outbreaks. Further bolstered by additional investment through the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 Ebola outbreak, the service quickly confirmed two cases of mpox on July 24, when a rapid response team with a mobile testing laboratory was sent to Kasese District, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. To date, the country has confirmed 24 cases.

“We are grateful for this timely and important offer from the Global Fund. Given our geographic, historical, social, economic and security interactions with the regional epicenter in the West, Uganda is more vulnerable to rapid and sustained transmission of mpox than any other country in the region,” said Dr. Henry Kyobe Bosa, epidemiologist and commander of the Incident Management Team (IMT) leading the federal government’s response to mpox, in addition to the federal government’s response to COVID-19 and Ebola. “Our primary goal is to limit the rapid spread of mpox in order to preserve health systems and prevent deaths among the most vulnerable communities.”

Since 2020, the Global Fund has invested $36 million in Uganda’s laboratory systems.

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned even more clearly from COVID-19, it’s that rapid diagnosis is the first line of defense against any infectious disease outbreak,” said Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund. “There are many benefits to investing in labs. A system that can rapidly diagnose COVID-19, Ebola and MPox can rapidly identify HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, and vice versa.”

UNHLDS reaches even essentially the most distant areas of the country with mobile laboratories and is now expanding its services to nearby countries. Today, UNHLDS is an unlimited, interconnected digital network through which healthcare providers and their patients can send samples for testing and receive ends in near real time.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the sample transport network became the backbone of the UNHLDS response: a built-in system to succeed in and test patients and monitor infections across the country. The global pandemic triggered a wave of research and technological innovation, constructing on existing infrastructure and expertise. UNHLDS also arrange a mobile laboratory equipped with portable biosafety equipment, allowing lab technicians to quickly travel to the outbreak site and safely test and discover dangerous pathogens corresponding to COVID-19, Ebola and now mpox.

In close collaboration with the Global Fund, MPox capabilities can even be integrated into ongoing pandemic preparedness and response activities, corresponding to risk communication skills, training of medical experts and transport of samples to research laboratories.

In addition to expanding laboratory capability, $121,818 of the reallocated funds will support wastewater surveillance, one other necessary early warning tool that gives communities with a snapshot of health status in a noninvasive, comprehensive, and unbiased manner. Wastewater surveillance was piloted with support from Project STELLAR through the COVID-19 pandemic and is now being expanded to support the mpox response.

“We need to expand the scope,” says Dr. Susan Nabadda Ndidde, commissioner and executive director of the National Health Laboratories. “With diseases emerging and re-emerging and the changes we see in patients, we need very strong laboratory and surveillance systems that can respond.”

The Global Fund’s COVID-19 Response Mechanism (C19RM) is a financing mechanism designed specifically to assist countries reply to COVID-19, mitigate the impact of the pandemic on HIV, tuberculosis and malaria programmes, and strengthen health systems.

Investments under C19RM have significantly contributed to Uganda’s effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and have strengthened its health systems.

C19RM funding of $232 million since 2020 has contributed to strengthening:

• disease surveillance systems;
• extensive laboratory systems.
• oxygen supply systems;
• strengthening the social system;
• medical waste management systems;
• case management systems (including ambulances/dispatch centres);
• in-country coordination and planning (which currently constitutes the primary team responding to MPox outbreaks);
• infection prevention and control (including personal protective equipment and isolation rooms);
• constructing capability and training of healthcare personnel in pandemic preparedness and response.

Investments in pandemic prevention and response during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic also played a very important role within the successful response to the Ebola outbreak in 2022 and are actually contributing to the national response to mpox.