GENEVA (AP) — The hunt for an Ebola vaccine will produce data soon about whether two experimental vaccines are safe and could lead to larger medical trials in West Africa by January, a top World Health Organization official said Tuesday.
Dr Marie Paule Kieny, an assistant director general for WHO, says clinical trials planned or underway in Europe, Africa and the US are being accompanied by a push among governments for immediate "real-world use'' of an approved Ebola vaccine.
She told reporters Tuesday in Geneva that, if the vaccines are deemed safe, tens of thousands of doses would be used in a West African trial in January.
Canada has donated 800 vials of the experimental vaccine to WHO but the shipment was delayed by a Lufthansa pilots strike. It is now expected to arrive in Switzerland on Wednesday for testing coordinated by the U.N. health agency among volunteers at the University Hospital of Geneva, and volunteers in Hamburg, Germany, and in Gabon and Kenya, Kieny said.
"These data are absolutely crucial to allow decision-making on what dose level should go in the efficacy testing in Africa," she said, referring to plans for the broader testing starting in 2015.
At a separate news conference, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib promised a thorough public audit of the agency's early missteps in responding to the Ebola outbreak that has already killed over 4,500 people.
"There is certainly a wish and a will to have this review," she said. "We know many elements need to be explained in the future. ... WHO will do that, but in the future; now our focus is on the response."
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