Ebola vaccine could be just weeks away

Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, an assistant director general for WHO, said that an experimental version of the vaccine could be ready for mass distribution in Africa early next year if current trials are successful.She said the trials planned or underway in Europe, Africa and the U.S. are being accompanied by a push among governments for immediate 'real-world use' of an approved Ebola vaccine.Speaking to reporters in Geneva today Dr Kieny revealed that, if the vaccines are deemed safe, tens of thousands of doses would be used in a West African trial in January.She said there are two leading candidates for a vaccine.One of them, developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline from a modified chimpanzee cold virus and an Ebola protein, is in clinical trials in the U.K. and in Mali. It will be used in clinical trials in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the start of February.The second front-runner, developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and known as VSV-EBOV, has been sent to the U.S. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland for testing on healthy volunteers, with results expected by December.The next stage would be to test it more broadly, including among those directly handling Ebola cases in West Africa.Meanwhile, the organization's emergency committee on Ebola will meet tomorrow to review the scope of the outbreak and whether additional measures are needed.'This is the third time this committee will meet since August to evaluate the situation,' WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a news briefing.'Much has happened, there have been cases in Spain and the United States, while Senegal and Nigeria have been removed from the list of countries affected by Ebola.'(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.Az