About 27,000 people have been infected with Ebola since the beginning of the West African outbreak; 11,000 have died. “What it really comes down to is everyone deserve the same right to be treated and to be free of disease.” said Spencer.
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Man being vaccinated against the Ebola virus.
Titled “Ebola, Ca Suffit” (Eboloa, that’s enough), the trial, which began on March 23, was set up by a major global cooperation involving the WHO and experts from Norway, France, Switzerland, USA, UK and Guinea.
This is precisely what was attempted in the trial that was carried out earlier this year in Guinea. Using a “ring” vaccination method, researchers selected people around an infected person to create a circle of protection.
Only people who had come in contact with Ebola patients, or those who contacted those who contacted them, were inoculated.
Close contacts of Ebola patients in Guinea will now be vaccinated immediately. The results were published on Friday in the Lancet journal and are hailed by the World Health Organization as a hope for putting a fullstop to deaths caused by the rapidly spreading virus.
So far, the vaccine has been 100 percent effective in individuals, the United Nation’s World Health Organization (WHO) said in a news release on Friday. At this point no country would consider vaccinating all its children against Ebola, for example.
It was also tested on a small number of frontline workers with the charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) who have been involved in treating those with the illness. Researchers have decided to stop randomized trials on each ring, instead vaccinating everyone immediately.
“Prior to vaccination there were cases, cases, cases”.
Only one dose of vaccine is needed and protection kicks in fast, within about six days.
“If proven effective, this is going to be a game-changer”. “That would both give us the opportunity to collect more evidence but it will also give access to those of highest risk of Ebola in Guinea”.
The sheer scale of the 2014-2015 outbreak led to an unprecedented push on vaccines — and a decade’s work has been condensed into around ten months. While the incidence has fallen off sharply, it hasn’t been eradicated, with seven confirmed cases in the week of July 29.
Professor John Edmunds, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, helped design the trial: “The development has been at an absolutely unprecedented speed. We welcome the news”.
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.
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The study shows that the new vaccine, known as VSV-ZEBOV, “may help finally extinguish this [Ebola] outbreak”, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist and a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Health Security.
