World Health Organization reports that an Ebola vaccine will go into the late stage of human testing later in the week in Guinea, one of the 3 West African nations to have been deeply affected by this disease. The vaccine has been developed by a Canadian health organization as reported by WHO by Thursday.
The Phase III trials of the rVSV-EBOV vaccine would be commencing on Saturday in Basse Guinée, the area of Guinea that at present has the maximum number of Ebola cases as confirmed by the United Nation’s health organization. Phase III trials are the last-stage of human testing prior to the drugs being put forward to regulators for its legal authorization.
The test of this vaccine approaches in the middle of this despicable outbreak in West Africa is reflecting indication of a slowdown. Data gathered by the WHO clearly indicates that this disease has exterminated about 10,000 individuals in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the 3 most affected nations due to this existing outbreak.
This disease travels through the bodily fluids causing high fever and internal bleeding and has an incubation period of 21 days.
As of now, there are no approved vaccines available for the protection against this malicious Ebola virus.
The WHO has said that investigators would take on a ‘ring vaccination’ strategy for the evaluation of this vaccine. This strategy has been applied for eradicating smallpox in the 1970s. This involves the identification of a newly diagnosed Ebola patient and vaccinating his/her contacts which will eventually form a ring around the patient involved.
This vaccine was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and certified to NewLink Genetics Corp. of Ames, Iowa. NewLink has signed a deal with Merck & Co to sell rights to the drug during the later part of 2014.
GlaxoSmithKline PLC has developed a second vaccine and the U.S. National Institutes for Health will also be tested for the availability of the supplies as per WHO.