Salone: clinical trial of preventive Ebola vaccine regimen in Sierra Leone

Supplying beds for Ebola patients to health facilities in Sierra Leone saved tens of thousands of lives by isolating patients, but providing them just one month earlier could have halved the number of reported cases, researchers said on Monday. While a few aid groups, such as Doctors Without Borders, spent months sounding warnings about the growing outbreak, the World Health Organization and many foreign governments moved far slower than the virus itself.

Taking into account both reported and presumed unreported cases, the researchers say 57,000 Ebola cases were prevented up to February 2015 as a direct result of the introduction of treatment beds.

The work from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, published in the journal PNAS, details how much of an impact a delay in global aid may have had.

“Our findings show the unprecedented local and worldwide response led to a substantial decline in Ebola transmission”, said lead author Adam Kucharski, lecturer in infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

As of October 2015, more than 28,400 people have been infected with the Ebola virus across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, and almost 11,300 have died, including more than 500 health care workers.

Kucharski added that in the coming time, there will be more outbreaks of Ebola and they can happen in South Africa or at any other place. “The response was as rapid as it could have been [once it began], and a lot of resources were put in, but it is getting that action to be much earlier in the first place [that is important]”.

There is now no licensed vaccine, treatment or cure for Ebola.

A restructured Ebola vaccine independently developed by China has entered phase two clinical trials in Sierra Leone, marking the vaccine’s first overseas clinical trial permit.

“By deploying NHS medics and military personnel and building treatment centres across the country, our swift action helped save countless lives and contain the spread of the disease”. “Studying vaccines here in Sierra Leone will help us to secure our own future against the disease, and is also a proud contribution from Sierra Leone to the rest of the world”.

“Defeating this Ebola outbreak has been a long and hard journey for everybody in Sierra Leone”, said Professor Monty Jones, Special Adviser on Ebola to the President of Sierra Leone.