The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that a potential vaccine for the Ebola virus is being tested on humans and could be ready for widespread use by early 2015.
The hope for a breakthrough, according to MailOnline report, came as experts from affected countries prepared to meet Monday afternoon, to discuss the use of experimental therapies for the illness.
Ebola symptoms are similar to those of flu, and include fever, weakness, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, and finally bleeding and death.
The virus is spread by close contact with an infected person through bodily fluids such as sweat, blood and tissue.Ebola kills 90 per cent of people who catch it, Western victims who have been flown home to their native countries have been given a new and experimental drug called Zmapp that could offer better chances of survival.
But doses of Zmapp are scarce, with a spokesman for the WHO telling MailOnline that at the moment there are just “a few doses of these drugs in Western labs.”
There is currently no licensed cure or vaccine for Ebola, one of the deadliest known viruses, but Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general of the UN health agency, told AFP she expected a vaccine to be rushed through.
“I think it’s realistic” to expect it to be available by 2015, said Ms Kieny.
Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, vaccine chief at WHO, told French radio RFI on Saturday that British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline appeared set to start clinical trials of a vaccine next month.
He also said he was optimistic about making the vaccine commercially available.
“Since this is an emergency, we can put emergency procedures in place ... so that we can have a vaccine available by 2015,’ he was quoted as saying by AFP.
Nearly 1,000 people have died so far in West Africa in the worst outbreak of Ebola ever.
On Mondat, health officials met for a video conference hosted by the WHO to discuss whether experimental treatments like Zmapp can be used in the efforts to contain the outbreak.Source: Tribune
The hope for a breakthrough, according to MailOnline report, came as experts from affected countries prepared to meet Monday afternoon, to discuss the use of experimental therapies for the illness.
Ebola symptoms are similar to those of flu, and include fever, weakness, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, and finally bleeding and death.
The virus is spread by close contact with an infected person through bodily fluids such as sweat, blood and tissue.Ebola kills 90 per cent of people who catch it, Western victims who have been flown home to their native countries have been given a new and experimental drug called Zmapp that could offer better chances of survival.
But doses of Zmapp are scarce, with a spokesman for the WHO telling MailOnline that at the moment there are just “a few doses of these drugs in Western labs.”
There is currently no licensed cure or vaccine for Ebola, one of the deadliest known viruses, but Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general of the UN health agency, told AFP she expected a vaccine to be rushed through.
“I think it’s realistic” to expect it to be available by 2015, said Ms Kieny.
Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, vaccine chief at WHO, told French radio RFI on Saturday that British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline appeared set to start clinical trials of a vaccine next month.
He also said he was optimistic about making the vaccine commercially available.
“Since this is an emergency, we can put emergency procedures in place ... so that we can have a vaccine available by 2015,’ he was quoted as saying by AFP.
Nearly 1,000 people have died so far in West Africa in the worst outbreak of Ebola ever.
On Mondat, health officials met for a video conference hosted by the WHO to discuss whether experimental treatments like Zmapp can be used in the efforts to contain the outbreak.Source: Tribune
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