Professor Rhoda Wanyenze was stepping out her office at Uganda’s Makerere University in March when a news item on the television caught her attention: more people had died of the novel coronavirus in China and Italy, and authorities were saying the pandemic was quickly making its way to Africa.
Immediately, Wanyenze – dean of the university’s School of Public Health as well as an epidemiologist – felt a jolt of anxiety. In 2014, when an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea had been mishandled, the viral haemorrhagic fever had spread across West Africa like wildfire, killing more than 11,000 people.
The epidemic had left the rest of the continent paralysed and scientists and public health experts stupefied. It had been a global disaster. But the new epidemic, originating in China, felt different: the rate at which it was spreading and killing its victims was much faster.
Wanyenze reached for her phone and posted a call on the school’s Facebook page, urging fast action against the new epidemic.
“We must all act very fast given the rapid spread,” she said. “With COVID-19, every hour and day matters and we can quickly lose the battle if we don’t act quickly!”
Homegrown solutions
“Anyone of us is at risk and we need to fight this bug jointly; we need to overcome whatever differences, whether political, or other and work across disciplines to identify comprehensive homegrown context appropriate solutions!
“Everyone has a role here, the behavioral scientists, communicators, psychologists, lawyers, ICT gurus, economists, engineers, veterinarians, etc and certainly our communities!” she wrote.
Unknown to her at the time, several other scientists and researchers at Makerere were also worried about the novel coronavirus and were pondering ways to mitigate its spread.
Dr Misaki Wayengera, senior lecturer in the department of pathology at the College of Health Sciences at Makerere University, was inventing a faster and low-cost COVID-19 test kit. A physician and researcher, Wayengera had previously created a cheap paper strip test to rapidly detect filoviruses, including Ebola and Marburg, which are zoonotic – like the novel coronavirus – and wanted to contribute his skills to the fight against the new threat.
Researchers at the ResilientAfrica Network (RAN), also under the School of Public Health at Makerere University, were designing a low-cost ventilator, to be used in the treatment of COVID-19 patients and whose global demand was rising steeply.
Scientific committee
Almost a week later, government drafted the researchers into a COVID-19 scientific committee to inform the country’s prevention and treatment strategy for the pandemic after cases were reported in East Africa.
Wayengera was given the job of chairing the committee, which includes experts from Makerere University such as Professor Denis Byarugaba, a veterinary doctor who has previously conducted research on coronaviruses, and Dr Betty Kivumbi, a mathematician who is helping to develop COVID-19 models for Uganda.
This committee has been at the centre of Uganda’s COVID-19 response, drafting local measures and guidelines for the prevention of the virus and treatment of its victims.
“We emphasised early initiation of social distancing, hygiene, and tracking of the initial imported cases and their contacts, testing and quarantine, which helps to minimise community spread and rapid build-up of cases,” Wanyenze told University World News.
Some of the clinical personnel on the scientific committee also manage patients, while the rest of the team addresses other components including virology and lab testing, public health and prediction models to inform planning, she said.
“COVID-19 is a new disease with a lot of unknowns and we needed to focus on it quickly, reviewing the evidence across the world to inform our decisions,” she said. “We are also designing research protocols to generate new evidence where there are gaps across the world.”
“It is critical that our Ugandan response is relevant to our context and we don’t just adopt what has been used elsewhere without local evidence,” she said.
Their efforts seem to be working.
As of 21 April, the local ministry of health had tested 6,661 samples for COVID-19, with 58 cases testing positive. Thirty-eight of these cases have been discharged.
Health Minister Dr Jane Ruth Aceng said government followed up on an additional 18,000 contacts and tested all truck drivers who came into the country via the different entry points.
She commended the scientists for their “selfless” service in the fight against the virus.
Ongoing work
However, the professors still have a lot of work to do to stop the pandemic.
For instance, there are still so many gaps in evidence and there is a need for testing of new drugs.
Wayengera’s test kits and RAN’s low-cost ventilator are still at initial stages of the innovation process. Both inventions need additional funding to fine-tune them before they can look to the World Health Organization (WHO) for accreditation.
Makerere University’s Research and Innovations Fund sponsored Wayengera’s test kits with an amount of less than US$22,000, but the scientist said the upcoming development stages would be more costly.
Professor Barnabas Nawangwe, vice-chancellor for Makerere University, said the institution was not only responding to COVID-19 through research and innovations, but the university has allowed its postgraduate students in clinical disciplines to join the frontline to fight the pandemic and has contributed relief items worth UGX85 million (US$22,400).
Wanyenze said scientists on the COVID-19 committee are working on protocols, which will guide the testing of new drug treatments.
They are also working on research to improve psychosocial support and track transmission.
