On Tuesday, Japanese Ambassador To Uganda His Excellency Kazuaki Kameda made his historic visit to the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) in Entebbe where he held important discussions with UVRI top leadership Prof. Pontiano Kaleebu (Managing Director) and Prof. Julius Lutwama (Deputy Managing Director) on how best UVRI and Japanese Embassy through the Japanese Government can collaborate to further research in emerging and re-emerging viruses. His Excellency Kazuaki Kameda who was accompanied by the Japanese Embassy Medical attache Dr. Kazuyo Miyamura also had a familiarization Tour of the different departments at Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI).
His Excellency Kazuaki Kameda had this to say about his visit to UVRI.
I’m visiting Uganda Virus Research Institute for the first time. I’ve been hearing that UVRI is doing a very important job and thanks to the Director Prof. Pontiano Kaleebu, I now have a clear picture what the institute is doing and I want to say that I’m very much impressed by the work of the institute which is particularly important nowadays that Uganda is facing a spate of the outbreak of the Ebola Virus from the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I’ve held discussions with both Prof. Pontiano Kaleebu (Managing Director) and Prof. Julius Lutwama (Deputy Managing Director) and as Japan we shall see what we can do.
I’ve toured the different departments and I’m impressed by the facilities that are well equipped and the staff are handling the equipment very well, the offices and the environment at UVRI are very clean and tidy and that has impressed me very much.
On his part Prof. Pontiano Kaleebu thanked His Excellency Kazuaki Kameda for his visit and also thanked the different international partners who have stood with UVRI.
We thank His Excellency Ambassador Kazuaki Kameda for having visited us. A lot of work is going on at UVRI but we wouldn’t be where we are without international participation and partnership, funding and research we do with our international partners and we are happy that the Japanese Ambassador had time to come from his busy schedule to see what we do. We have shown him were our gaps are and where we need some support and we hope we shall continue discussions. UVRI has worked with Japan before and we look forward that Japan plays a bigger role here at UVRI.
