Clinical trials of a preventative vaccine for the Ebola virus made by
British pharma company GlaxoSmithKline may begin next month and made
available by 2015, the World Health Organization said on Saturday.
"We are targeting September for the start of clinical trials, first in
the United States and certainly in African countries, since that's
where we have the cases," Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, the WHO's head of
vaccines and immunisation, told French radio.
He said he was optimistic about making the vaccine commercially
available. "We think that if we start in September, we could already
have results by the end of the year.
"And since this is an emergency, we can put emergency procedures in
place ... so that we can have a vaccine available by 2015."
There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, a virus
that causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable
bleeding.
It has claimed close to 1,000 lives in the latest epidemic to spread
across west Africa this year. Fatality rates can approach 90 percent,
although the latest outbreak has killed around 55 to 60 percent of
those infected.
Several vaccines are being tested, and a treatment made by San
Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, ZMapp, has shown promising results
on monkeys and may have been effective in treating two Americans
recently infected in Africa.
AFP
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