A new Ebola vaccine has proved to be 100 per cent effective in an early trial of 4,000 people.
The World Health Organisation said the newly-developed vaccine could be “game changing” after the initial success of the te ... read full comment
A new Ebola vaccine has proved to be 100 per cent effective in an early trial of 4,000 people.
The World Health Organisation said the newly-developed vaccine could be “game changing” after the initial success of the tests in Guinea.
The deadly disease did not develop in any of 4,000 people who had been in close contact with a confirmed Ebola case.
The vaccine could now be used to help end the worst recorded outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 11,200 people in West Africa since it began in December 2013.
Marie Paule Kieny, vaccine expert for the WHO, said: "We believe that the world is on the verge of an efficacious Ebola vaccine."
There is currently no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola.
Publishing the results online in the medical journal The Lancet on Friday, researchers said they showed that the vaccine could be "highly efficacious in preventing Ebola virus disease".
Jeremy Farrar, a leading infectious disease specialist and director of the Wellcome Trust, which helped fund the trial the Merck and NewLink Genetics' VSV-ZEBOV vaccine, described the results as "remarkable".
"This trial dared to use a highly innovative and pragmatic design, which allowed the team in Guinea to assess this vaccine in the middle of an epidemic," he said.
"Our hope is that this vaccine will now help bring this epidemic to an end and be available for the inevitable future Ebola epidemics."
Bertrand Draguez, medical director of Doctors without Borders (MSF), which has led the fight against Ebola in West Africa, said: "For the first time there is a prospect of a tool that could protect lives and break chains of transmission."
A new Ebola vaccine has proved to be 100 per cent effective in an early trial of 4,000 people.
The World Health Organisation said the newly-developed vaccine could be “game changing” after the initial success of the te ...
read full comment