Global Fund For Vaccines Can Prevent Outbreak Of Deadly Diseases

However, a vaccine has not been licensed yet, as it still remains experimental. And to be honest I wasn’t sure if I ever would have expected this to happen during my active (career) time. But in science, assumptions don’t count – data do.

100% protection sounds too good to be true.

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“The fundamental challenges facing the discovery and development of new vaccines are growing in significance and can no longer be ignored”, said one of the study authors Jeremy Farrar, director of the Britain-based Wellcome Trust. The study was published online Friday in the journal Lancet. “That’s good news for an outbreak situation”, says Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, UK, who is involved in testing a different Ebola vaccine.

It is one of several underway in West Africa trying to prove whether a number of vaccines and therapies protect against Ebola or help people infected with it to survive. However, new outbreaks has brought forward bigger funds and spread more awareness of the deadly virus that has now led to an effective solution that may put an end to the epidemic once and for all.

That this one did is a coup. With initial support, the global vaccine fund could help make vaccines available for emergency use. Merck supplied the vaccine.

The trial used an unusual strategy – “ring vaccination” – that was used in the campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. All 2,014 of those vaccinated immediately showed no signs of the virus after 10 days, and only 10 out of 2,380 given a delayed vaccination turned into Ebola cases.

Cuban medical personnel which set high standards in the relief efforts illustrates the ability of a socialist society to develop scientists, educators and healthcare workers who operate on a planned basis designed to address the needs of the people.

“After a poorly managed global response to the Ebola outbreak last year, news of the phenomenal successes of these vaccine trials in Guinea-100 percent efficacy in a trial cohort of 4,000 patients-is simply tremendous”, Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said. The procedure would be to vaccinate in a ring around known cases. Mice lacking both copies of the NPC1 gene, and therefore having no NPC1 protein, were completely resistant to infection. At that time, it was doubtful whether the will existed to test vaccines at all. But the diminishing number of cases is what forced researchers to design a new kind of trial. “It’s inevitable that some people will be in a race against the clock after they become exposed; if they’ve not been vaccinated and then fall sick before they can be vaccinated, therapies may be their only hope”. Each ring was randomly assigned to immediate vaccination or to wait 21 days. In the case of many vaccine-preventable diseases, the vaccine reach is low.

For more than a year and a half, three of the world’s poorest countries have struggled against the most devastating Ebola epidemic in human history. So far, more than 11,000 deaths have been recorded in West Africa. While WHO obsesses over the dangers of our lifestyle choices, it might be better served by giving greater support to programmes that can provide vaccines to combat other awful diseases that still blight the developing world. Now that the data shows clear evidence the vaccine is working, the trial will continue, and all participants will receive the vaccine immediately.