The World Health Organization’s emergencies head on Friday praised the “fastest roll-out” of an Ebola vaccine trial amid an epidemic, as Uganda responded to its latest outbreak.
The sixth Ebola outbreak in Uganda, for which there is currently no licensed vaccine, resulted in the death of a nurse last week. Only one of the five other species of the Ebola virus has an approved vaccine.
WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan discussed the study, which started Monday, with AFP at the Uganda Virus Research Institute in Entebbe, close to Kampala.
Q: How confident are you about this vaccine?
A: I believe this is a real step forward. This vaccine is based on the same platform that was used to develop the very effective vaccine for Ebola Zaire, so I believe there’s a real chance that this vaccine will be very effective.
But obviously as is the case with all candidate vaccines, we have to ensure that they are effective. The vaccine has been proven to be safe in safety trials, but again we continue to look at the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.
This vaccine is specifically designed for outbreak situations. We don’t know how long the protection lasts. That’s one of the reasons I’m here today.
This is the first and fastest rollout in my memory of a vaccine in a real epidemic situation. The other first is the virus was sequenced in less than 24 hours by the central public health laboratories here in Uganda and published so quickly. I have never seen a virus sequence done so quickly and shared with the world.
Q: How widely is this being rolled out?
A: There are about 2,400 vaccines in the country. They’re only been given to contacts (of the initial case). This vaccine works by helping to protect a contact from getting sick or getting severely ill so the most important thing is to give the vaccine to people in contact with the case. The general population don’t have to worry. This is a very specific problem. It’s not a major problem for society
Q: Are you concerned about the US withdrawal from the WHO?
A: I’m very sad at the loss of US colleagues in the US collaboration with the World Health Organization but we’ve learned a lot, and the world has moved on too.
Look at here in Uganda, the capability in this country and in many other countries has grown both scientifically in terms of medicine and in terms of operations and logistics. The world is not where it was 20 or 30 years ago
