The East African Community (EAC) has officially designated the Uganda Virus Research Institute in Entebbe as a Regional Centre of Excellence in Virology, a major move aimed at boosting the bloc’s capacity to monitor, detect, and control infectious disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n
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The facility will serve as a central hub for advanced viral research, specialised training, rapid diagnostics, and data sharing across member states. The regional upgrade aims to equip the EAC to handle high-risk pathogens including Ebola, Marburg, and other emerging viral threats.<\/p>\n
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Officially launching the centre on behalf of President Yoweri Museveni, Ugandan Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja highlighted the importance of regional scientific self-reliance.<\/p>\n
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“A nation that studies its own pathogens is a self-reliant nation,” said Nabbanja, adding that the government is committing to increasing funding for research.<\/p>\n
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EAC Chairperson of the Council of Ministers Rebecca Kadaga noted that the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how quickly health crises cross borders, reinforcing the need for shared infrastructure.<\/p>\n
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The operationalisation of the centre forms part of the EAC Health Investment Priority Framework 2018\u20132028. Supported by the German government through KfW and the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, the initiative also includes the rollout of mobile container-based laboratories designed to cut test turnaround times from 72 hours down to eight hours.<\/p>\n
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–ChannelAfrica\/EAC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":34049,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-40651","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"EAC names Uganda Virus Research Institute regional virology hub","published_date":"2026-07-26 08:35:43","news_description":"EAC names Uganda Virus Research Institute regional virology hub","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40652,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40651\/revisions\/40652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=40651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}