Hundreds of thousands of Ebola vaccine doses could be rolled out to West Africa by mid-2015, the World Health Organization said, after a new case of the virus was reported in New York and a two-year-old girl died in the first case in Mali.
The search for an effective vaccine to fight the disease took on fresh urgency as the WHO said several hundred thousand doses could be available in the “first half” of 2015.
“All is being put in place to start efficacy tests in the affected countries as early as December,” WHO assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny said.
Kieny’s comments came after closed-door talks to try to find a vaccine to beat a disease that has ravaged the west African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
– ‘Real-world’ tests –
Experts are pinning their hopes on the experimental vaccine rVSV, with doses arriving in Geneva for a new round of trials, and ChAd3, made by Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline.
Five other potential vaccines are in the pipeline.
Whichever proves effective in trials, WHO hopes to send huge numbers of doses to Africa for “real-world” tests.
“The pharmaceutical companies developing all these vaccines are committing to ramping up the production capacity to millions of doses to be available in 2015,” said Kieny.
There is currently no licensed cure for Ebola, which is transmitted through close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or someone who has died from the disease.
Two American nurses were declared cured of Ebola and one — Dallas-based Nina Pham — hugged President Barack Obama at the White House to prove it.
But the states of New York and New Jersey ordered mandatory quarantine for medics who had treated victims of the disease in West Africa.
Steps include mandatory quarantine for 21 days of any individual who has had direct contact with an Ebola patient while in Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone, including medics who treated Ebola patients.
The new measures were ordered by state governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie on Friday, the day after an American doctor tested positive for Ebola one week after returning from working in hard-hit Guinea.
Craig Spencer, 33, was said to be in stable condition in isolation at New York’s Bellevue Hospital Centre, receiving treatment for the illness which has killed nearly 4,900 people — most of them in West Africa.