According to Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, deputy director of the World Health Organization (WHO), the first vaccines against Ebola hemorrhagic fever should be tested in West African countries affected by the epidemic ” if possible “next December.
This is the first time that the vaccines will be tested outside the laboratory.
The scientist also announced that research was also underway for five other vaccines, which could give results in the first months of 2015. Recall that the deputy director of the WHO has volunteered to test a vaccine against Ebola, in solidarity with the many health workers affected by the infection who lost their lives.
The first hundreds of thousands of doses available in June 2015
In the race against time that has started against the Ebola virus, Dr Kieny also announced two other dates “subject to the vaccines being considered safe”:
– The provision of several hundred thousand doses of vaccines at the end of the first half of 2015.
– The hope that pharmaceutical companies will be able to use their full capacities in order to be able to provide several million doses by the end of 2015.
Dr Kieny remains very cautious, however. She recalls that the vaccines being tested could prove to be unsafe or unusable.
In the meantime, researchers at the WHO in Switzerland today received several doses of the VSV-EBOV vaccine. sent by Canada. This antidote made by the Canadian Microbiology Laboratory Winnipeg has been tested and validated on animals. On the other hand, it has not yet been tested on men.
