The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended the inclusion of two additional vaccine candidates in clinical trials to combat the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, as an outbreak across parts of Africa continues to claim lives.
WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced the development saying the new candidates would be added to an ongoing vaccine trial aimed at controlling the outbreak.
He explained that although trials using the Ervebo vaccine began last month, the vaccine is approved for the Zaire strain of Ebola and not the Bundibugyo strain currently spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The two recommended candidates are ChAdOx1 BDBV, developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with the Serum Institute of India, and Moderna’s mRNA-1469. Both were specifically developed to target the Bundibugyo virus.
Tedros said the Democratic Republic of Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research was leading the trial with support from the WHO and other partners.
He stressed that while vaccines remain important in controlling the disease, they must be complemented by established public health measures, including early treatment, contact tracing, isolation, safe burials and community engagement.
On Monday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) reported that the ongoing Ebola outbreak had killed more than 5,300 people, with the majority of fatalities recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The agency said 10,444 cases had been confirmed, representing a fatality rate of more than 50 per cent.
Nigeria has also recorded an imported case of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, following confirmation by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) on October 20 in the Federal Capital Territory.
The case involved a woman who travelled from Uganda, making Nigeria the fifth country to detect the virus since the outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on May 15, 2026.
The index patient was evacuated to Switzerland on October 26 for further medical treatment, alongside her husband, who was identified as a close contact.
As of November 3, the NCDC’s situation dashboard recorded one confirmed case and no deaths in Nigeria, with 62 contacts identified, 57 of whom were in quarantine.
Nigeria’s previous Ebola outbreak occurred in 2014, when an infected Liberian traveller introduced the virus into Lagos. The outbreak subsequently spread to Port Harcourt, resulting in 20 cases and eight deaths.
The WHO declared Nigeria free of Ebola transmission on October 20, 2014, after the country recorded 42 consecutive days without a new infection.
