Ebola vaccine should be ready for public use by next year - WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised hopes concerning the management of Ebola virus. It said an Ebola vaccine should be ready for public use by 2015.

“I think it’s realistic”, Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) told AFP yesterday, with clinical trials expected to get underway soon.

“Since this is an emergency, we can put emergency procedures in place... so that we can have a vaccine available by 2015,” Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, the head of immunisation and vaccines at the WHO, told French radio broadcaster RFI.

He also said that GlaxoSmithKline will start trials next month, with the British pharmaceutical giant having initially started its own development of the vaccine in May 2013.

It said on its website: “We are working with the US National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC) to advance development of an early stage vaccine candidate for Ebola. GSK acquired the vaccine candidate when we purchased Okairos in May 2013.

“In collaboration with VRC, we have evaluated this vaccine candidate in pre-clinical studies and we are now discussing with regulators advancing it to a phase I clinical trial programme later this year.”

A spokeswoman for GSK told The Independent: “It’s too early to speculate on timing.

“GSK and the VRC appreciate the very serious nature of the current Ebola outbreak, however, our vaccine candidate is at a very early stage of development and is not yet ready for use in these circumstances.”