GENEVA JULY 31, 2015 (CISA) – The world will soon be able to protect humans against Ebola the World Health Organization (WHO) has said as data from a trial in Guinea showed a vaccine was “100 percent effective.”
“We believe that the world is on the verge of an efficacious Ebola vaccine,” said WHO vaccine expert Marie Paule Kieny in a statement, reported Reuters.
According to WHO initial results from the trial, which tested Merck and NewLink Genetics’ VSV-ZEBOV vaccine, on some 4,000 people who had been in close contact with a confirmed Ebola case showed 100 percent protection after 10 days.
Global health specialists described the success of the Guinea trial as “remarkable” and “game changing.”
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the results, published online in the medical journal The Lancet, were an “extremely promising development” since it could now be used to help end the worst recorded outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 11,200 people in West Africa since it began in December 2013.
“This is going to be a game changer. It will change the management of the current Ebola outbreak and future outbreaks,” she said.
Another major trial in Liberia, which had aimed to sign up more than 28,000 subjects, had to stop enrolling after only reaching its mid-stage target of 1,500 participants, and plans for testing in Sierra Leone were also scaled back.
