“We have created three vaccines and we believe they will be ready within the next six months. But one is already available for a clinical trial,” announced Veronika Skvortsova, Russia’s Minister of Health.
As the Ebola virus continues to spread, efforts to develop a vaccine are multiplying. Mali has volunteered to test the vaccine developed by the GSK laboratory. 40 people between the ages of 18 and 40 belonging to the health personnel responsible for dealing with suspected cases have volunteered for the phase 1 trial, the very first step in a long series of clinical trials necessary to evaluate the vaccine . The World Health Organization (WHO) hopes to obtain initial results in November-December 2014 to launch phase 2 from January-February 2015, to assess the effectiveness of the vaccine in affected countries.
This vaccine, called ChAd3, is identical to the one that was tested on macaques early September. Initially, the four monkeys had been protected “completely in the short term and partially in the long term”, then a second injection gave them complete long-term protection against the hemorrhagic fever virus.
The Ebola outbreak is spreading faster than ever. To date, Ebola has killed more than 4,000 people out of 7,399 cases recorded in 7 countries (Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States), according to the World Health Organization. The Minister of Social Affairs and Health, Marisol Touraine, is expected in Brussels on Thursday for a meeting on the subject, with her European partners.
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