Guinea Plans Ebola Inoculation Campaign After Vaccine Success

The British medical journal Lancet has published early test results and analyses of the findings.

“In the past, I think there wasn’t a strong belief that we needed an Ebola vaccine or that it would actually be possible to develop an Ebola vaccine”, Feinberg said.

Yumkella is originally from Sierra Leone, one of several African countries ravaged by the virus.

The company’s total revenue rose to $7.4 million, up from just $212,000 for the same quarter a year ago. They can affect many organs, damage blood vessels and affect the body’s ability to fight infection.

The hope now is that the legacy of this unprecedented outbreak will be a vaccine that means a tragedy of this scale can never be repeated.

The vaccine is known as VSV-EBOC. There is more testing required. After one patient contracts the disease, their close contacts are vaccinated in the hope of stemming the onward spread of the virus.

Disease experts welcomed the results.

Fink says Margaret Chan, the director general of the WHO, echoed these points.

Vaccine could be “game-changer”.

Ben Neuman, a virologist at the University of Reading, said: “It looks to be about as safe as a flu vaccine”.

On July 26, as a result of successfully slowing or stopping the spread of Ebola within communities where people had been effected, researchers stopped randomizing the vaccinations and began giving it to everyone. As mentioned, no new cases were documented. But then it seemed to change, resulting in a series of sudden, small outbreaks across the area.

Merck reported the preliminary conclusions from this study, which is continuing, were published on-line today in The Lancet.

The test, backed by drug firm Merck, the WHO and the governments of Canada, Norway and Guinea, saw 4,123 high-risk people vaccinated immediately after someone close to them fell ill with the deadly haemorrhagic fever. The ring vaccination design works by distributing the vaccine to people shortly after a case of Ebola was detected.

“The premise is that by vaccinating all people who have come into contact with an infected person you create a protective “ring” and stop the virus from spreading further”, said infectious disease specialist John-Arne Røttingen with the World Health Organization. About half got vaccinated immediately, and the others had to wait three weeks for the shot.

There are still other vaccines being trialed – notably from GSK and Johnson & Johnson – although as the number of cases continues to fall, it is becoming increasingly hard to prove how effective they are. But non-replicating vaccines, which may need two injections, could be longer-lasting and better suited to protecting people outside an epidemic.

VSV-EBOV may become the first licensed vaccine against the disease for which there is also no approved treatment or cure. Such a permit would enable production of the vaccine for future Ebola epidemics. “In fact there was a vaccine that was brought to Sierra Leone whereby we tested it on our own frontline workers to see its efficacy”, said Bayraytay. The three countries have at least 11,279 Ebola deaths.

Scientists believe the vaccine is most effective at the onset of an outbreak and plan to expand the vaccination to minors age 13 and older.