health

Ebola vaccine: safe, but yet to prove potent



London - A vaccine against the Ebola virus
about to be tested on 30 000 people in West
Africa is safe, but has yet to prove its
efficacy.
It sailed through clinical trials in Britain, the
United States, Switzerland and Mali with
around 200 healthy volunteers.
Findings published in New England Journal of
Medicine show the vaccine generated
immunity with levels of antibodies increasing
over a period of 28 days.
But whether these levels will be enough to
counter the virus remains to be seen.
The vaccine uses a type of chimpanzee cold
virus as a carrier to deliver benign genetic
material from the Zaire strain of the Ebola
virus, which is responsible for the recent
Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Since the start of the outbreak in March,
Ebola has killed 8 600 people. More than 21
797 cases have been reported. Recently the
rate of new infections has declined sharply,
suggesting the crisis will soon be over.
University of Nottingham virologist Jonathan
Ball described the response of those in the
British trial as a "tad disappointing."
The West Africa trials will decide whether the
degree of immunity given by the vaccine from
British pharmaceuticals company
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is sufficient to protect
people from infection.