A prototype vaccine for Ebola may be \u201cup to 100 percent effective\u201d in protecting against the deadly virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday, reports AFP from Paris.
\nIf all goes well, the vaccine could become available in 2018 under a fast-track approval process, it said.
\nIn a major clinical trial, nearly 6,000 people in Guinea were given the test vaccine last year, at the tail end of a lethal epidemic of Ebola. Not one of the 6,000 contracted the disease.
\nBut in a control group of volunteers that did not receive the vaccine, 23 Ebola cases occurred, researchers reported in The Lancet medical journal.
\n\u201cIf we compare zero to 23, this strongly suggests that the vaccine is very effective, that it could be up to 100 percent effective,\u201d Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO\u2019s assistant
\ndirector-general and lead author of the
\nstudy, told AFP.
\nHer team of three dozen researchers calculated a 90-percent likelihood during a full-fledged epidemic that the vaccine, dubbed rVSV-ZEBOV, would work in more than 80 percent of cases.
\n\u201cAfter 40 years, we appear to now have an effective vaccine for Ebola virus disease to build upon,\u201d Thomas Geisbert, a scientist at Galveston National Laboratory in Texas who did not take part in the study, wrote in a commentary, also in The Lancet.
\nFirst identified in 1976 in what is now the<\/p>\n
Democratic Republic of Congo, the Ebola virus erupted periodically in outbreaks of up to a couple hundred cases, mainly across west and east Africa.
\nIn early 2014, however, a handful of infections in southern Guinea mushroomed rapidly into an epidemic.
\nOver the next two years, more than 28,000 people fell ill, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
\nSome 11,300 died.
\nWith a mortality rate above 40 percent, the disease\u2014one of a category of so-called haemorrhagic fevers\u2014has an incubation period of up to three weeks. It causes violent and painful symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhoea, organ failure and internal bleeding.
\nThe new vaccine was initially developed in Canada by public health authorities before being taken over by pharmaceutical giant Merck.
\nIt is slated to be submitted by Merck to health authorities in the United States and Europe sometime next year under a fast-track approval process.
\n\u201cWe may have a vaccine which is registered in 2018,\u201d Kieny told journalists at a press conference Thursday, noting that the standard approval process for a new drug takes a decade, if not more.
\nIn the meantime, Merck has committed to ensuring that 300,000 doses of the vaccine are available for emergencies under a protocol called \u201ccompassionate use\u201d.
\n\u201cThey will be able to produce a million in very short period of time,\u201d Kieny noted.There are still questions to be resolved concerning the vaccine, including side effects.
\nInitial tests last year did not include children, while the most recent trials covered those over six years old.
\nOf the more than 6,000 people injected with the Ebola vaccine only two showed serious adverse effects, the study reported. Both recovered fully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A prototype vaccine for Ebola may be “up to 100 percent effective” in protecting against the deadly virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday, reports AFP from Paris. If all goes well, the vaccine could become available in 2018 under a fast-track approval process, it said. In a major clinical trial, nearly 6,000 people in Guinea were given the test vaccine last year, at the tail end of a lethal epidemic of Ebola. Not one of the 6,000 contracted the disease. But in a control group of volunteers that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5174,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5172\/revisions\/5174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}