EBOLA: HOPE RISES AS HUMAN TRIAL FOR VACCINE BEGINS THIS WEEK!

Following the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa that has killed more than 1,550 people with most of them in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, scientists are working on a potential Ebola vaccine. In the US, the National Institutes of Health ( NIH) is developing the vaccine with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. Although Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the vaccine has “performed extremely well” in primate studies, it has not yet been tested in humans. The phase 1 clinical trial, which is set to begin this week at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, will involve 20 human subjects between the ages of 18 and 50, according to the NIH.



In the UK, Professor Dr Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, is leading the team carrying out the tests that will be used by 60 healthy volunteers. Each set of volunteers will be split into groups of 20 that will receive different doses of the vaccine so researchers can evaluate the best dose to use in terms of both safety and activity. An Ebola vaccine is different from the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, which 2 Americans received last month and is designed to treat an existing Ebola infection rather than prevent one. According to Hill, the entire trial programme is being fast-tracked – subject to ethical approval – with the intention of using the vaccine in people at high risk in West Africa early next year. At present there is no vaccine to prevent the disease and no proven treatment. The new vaccine contains a single ebola virus protein from the strain sweeping West Africa – anyone inoculated with it cannot develop the disease itself.

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Deji Sadiq, a.k.a DEJI OF LAGOS is a LASU trained Economist turned freelance journalist, a Blogger, an information strategist, a public affairs analyst and a committed activist with a passion for equal opportunities.