Up to 23 October: 4,922
Deaths - probable, confirmed and
suspected
(Includes one death in US and one in
Mali)
- 2,705 Liberia
- 926 Guinea
- 1,281 Sierra Leone
- 8 Nigeria
Source: WHO
Millions of doses of experimental
Ebola vaccines will be produced by the end of 2015, the World Health
Organization has announced.
It said "several hundred
thousand" would be produced in the first half of the year.
And vaccines could be offered to
health workers on the frontline in West Africa as soon as December 2014.
However, the WHO cautioned that
vaccines would not be a "magic bullet" for ending the outbreak.
There is no proven cure or vaccine
for Ebola.
In response to the largest epidemic
of the disease in history, the WHO is accelerating the process of vaccine
development
It normally takes years to produce
and test a vaccine, but drug manufacturers are now working on a scale of weeks.
In other developments
- Dozens of people are being monitored in Mali after the country confirmed its first case of Ebola
- Both nurses who were infected with Ebola in Dallas, Texas are now clear of the virus.
- Health officials in New York are seeking people who came into contact with a doctor who tested positive after returning from Guinea
- European Union leaders agreed to increase their financial help on fighting Ebola in West Africa from some 600m euros ($758m; £743m) to one billion
Correct Dose
Two experimental vaccines, produced
by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the Public Health Agency of Canada, are already in
safety trials.
The GSK vaccine is being tested in
Mali, the UK and the US. Research on the Canadian vaccine is also under way in
the US with further trials expected to start in Europe and Africa soon.
The results are expected in
December. After that, trials will move to countries affected by Ebola, probably
starting with Liberia.
That will allow researchers to
assess how effective the vaccine is and what dose is needed to provide
protection.
Volunteers on the frontline of the
epidemic will be vaccinated first
Healthcare workers, who place
themselves at risk when treating patients, will take part in the first trials
in West Africa.
The WHO says we should have the
first hints of how effective these experimental vaccines are by April.
There are no plans for mass
vaccination before June 2015 but the WHO has not ruled it out.
The WHO says vaccines are likely to
be key to ending the outbreak, even if cases fall in the next few months.
Dr Marie Paule Kieny, WHO:
"Pharmaceutical companies committed to ramping up production"
Dr Marie Paule Kieny, a WHO
assistant director-general, said: "While we hope that the massive
response, which has been put in place will have an impact on the epidemic, it
is still prudent to prepare to have as much vaccine available as possible if
they are proven effective.
"If the massive effort in
response is not sufficient, then vaccine would be a very important tool.
"And even if the epidemic would
be already receding by the time we have vaccine available, the modelling seems
to say vaccine may still have an impact on controlling the epidemic."
The vaccine plan was the culmination
of a day of talks at the WHO in Geneva.
As well as the two vaccines already
in trials, there are a further five in the pipeline which could yet play a role
in the outbreak.
The World Bank and the charity
Medecins Sans Frontieres will help finance the vaccine.
....
Dr Marta Tufet, from the Wellcome
Trust and part of the talks in Geneva, told the BBC News website: "I think
we've made some majors steps forward, it's been a very significant meeting.
"The key news is that money
doesn't seem to be an issue, everyone's supporting this and it's a case of
making sure we're prepared.
"The standard method of public
health control will win in the end, but a vaccine could have a very strong
impact on the current epidemic."
There are also suggestions that an
"indemnity fund" could be set up in case people have a serious
adverse reaction to a vaccine being rushed through.
But until a vaccine is found to
prevent the virus from spreading, treating and isolating sufferers will remain
the key strategy for containing the outbreak.
Big risk
Jonathan Ball, a professor of
virology at the University of Nottingham, commented: "This is a big risk
because we simply don't know if the vaccines will work.
"But clearly, given the scale
of problem in Africa, a problem that has arisen through international apathy,
we are having to prepare for the worse."
He added that it would be difficult
to deliver the vaccine - which needs to be stored at very low temperatures -
would be a major challenge in Africa.
Dr Benjamin Neuman, from the
University of Reading, told the BBC: "I very much hope that the current
outbreak will be over before the first vaccines ship, but even so, a vaccine
will be important to long-term plans to prevent an Ebola outbreak on this scale
from ever happening again."
He said there were many
"similarly frightening and incurable viruses" across Europe and the
Americas but they were contained by infrastructure.
He said that for all the talk of
vaccines: "The closest thing to a magic bullet that stops all diseases is
still a hospital."
Source:
24 October 2014
