Ebola vaccine may be ready in Africa by January – WHO

 An experimental version of Ebola vaccine could be ready for mass distribution in Africa by January, if current trials are successful, Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, an assistant director general for World Health Organization (WHO) told reporters today (October 21, 2014) in Geneva.

She said there are two leading candidates for a vaccine.

One of them, developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline from a modified chimpanzee cold virus and an Ebola protein, is in clinical trials in the U.K. and in Mali. It will be used in clinical trials in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the start of February.



The second front-runner, developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and known as VSV-EBOV, has been sent to the U.S. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland for testing on healthy volunteers, with results expected by December.