Ebola vaccine approved for use in ongoing outbreak quoting : Nature Research

"Ebola outbreaks are tragic but expected," says Mark Feinberg, president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative based in New York City. John Moore/Getty ImagesRegulatory and ethics-review boards in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have approved the use of an experimental Ebola vaccine to combat an ongoing outbreak of the virus, officials announced on 29 May. The key to Merck's vaccine is a protein expressed on the surface of the Zaire strain of Ebola, collected during a 1995 outbreak in Kikwit, DRC. Officials have confirmed only two cases of Ebola since they started getting reports of people with Ebola-like symptoms in late April. And communities must be educated about the vaccine so that there are no misunderstandings about its safety or its benefits, given the danger of Ebola.




Public health officials in the DRC have reported at least 43 cases of suspected Ebola and four deaths. The vaccine was developed during the last major outbreak of the Ebola virus, which began in 2014 in West Africa and caused a global panic. The DRC was one of the first countries to experience an outbreak of Ebola when the virus appeared in 1976. Officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have approved the use of an experimental Ebola vaccine in the hopes of stemming the spread of a recent outbreak of the deadly virus in the African nation. As of Monday there have been no new cases of the virus reported.

An Ebola vaccine has been approved for use in DR Congo's outbreak — Quartz

On May 12, the World Health Organization declared an Ebola outbreak in DR Congo after it confirmed three deaths. Now, with as many as 52 suspected cases, DR Congo's health ministry is stepping up its response and has approved the use of a new experimental vaccine to stop the outbreak. DR Congo's relative containment of the virus so far has been attributed to the outbreak's occurrence in a remote part of the country's northeast. In its battle to stop the spread of the Ebola after a recent outbreak, a new WHO-backed vaccine is the Democratic Republic of Congo's weapon of choice. In a previous outbreak mainly in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the Ebola virus killed over 11,000 people as health services were ill-prepared to respond to the outbreak.


collected by :Lucy William

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