300,000 EBOLA VACCINE SET TO BE DEPLOYED BY W.H.O AS NEW CASES RESURFACES

The GAVI global vaccine alliance said on Friday some 300,000 emergency doses of an Ebola vaccine developed by Merck could be available in case of a large-scale outbreak of the disease, after the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed a fatal case in Congo.

The vaccine, known as “rVSV-ZEBOV”, was shown to be highly protective against Ebola in clinical trials published in December 2016.

A spokesperson for the WHO told Reuters on Friday that a person in the Democratic Republic of Congo had died after becoming infected with Ebola, a contagious virus that causes hemorrhagic fever.


The experimental vaccine was highly protective against the deadly virus in a major trial in Guinea, according to results published in The Lancet.

The vaccine is the first to prevent infection from one of the most lethal known pathogens, and the findings add weight to early trial results published in 2016.


The vaccine was studied in a trial involving 11 841 people in Guinea during 2015.


Among the 5,837 people who received the vaccine, no Ebola cases were recorded 10 days or more after vaccination.


In comparison, there were 23 cases 10 days or more after vaccination among those who did not receive the vaccine.


The trial was led by WHO, together with Guinea’s Ministry of Health, Medecins sans Frontieres and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, in collaboration with other international partners.