Ebola Vaccine to be Tested on a Large Scale for the First Time

The large-scale testing of the Ebola vaccine will begin on Monday in Liberia. Initially, a very low dose of the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus will be injected into 12 volunteers in Liberia, West Africa, to stimulate their immune systems to produce antibodies against the virus. This vaccine has been developed by the companies Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, and they hope to administer it to 30,000 volunteers, including healthcare workers, during this phase of testing. The epicenter of this disease has been in West Africa, with over 21,000 reported cases since June, resulting in more than 5,800 deaths, the majority of which occurred in Liberia with over 3,600 reported cases, followed by Guinea and Sierra Leone. With strict measures to combat the widespread outbreak of this virus, including school closures and the establishment of quarantine zones, particularly in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, the number of cases has significantly decreased in recent weeks. According to the World Health Organization, the number of cases in these three countries has dropped to less than 100 per week for the first time. This improvement has been particularly noted in Liberia, where only 4 cases were reported in the last week of January. Consequently, the World Health Organization states that the outbreak has now entered 'Phase Two' and efforts should focus on ending it. Seth Berkley, the director of GAVI, a public-private partnership including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that supports the global production of effective and affordable vaccines, told Reuters that it is essential, in addition to focusing on testing the Zaire Ebola virus vaccine, to quickly move towards finding effective vaccines against other strains of the virus, such as Sudan Ebola, and to produce affordable, storable vaccines that are easy to use in Africa, as there will be future outbreaks of this virus.