Ebola, a disease which has been ravaging African countries for years is about to meet its Waterloo as a vaccine is being deployed to try to stop disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Merck’s rVSV-ZEBOV is the first highly effective Ebola vaccine and it’s expected to be an extremely useful tool in the DRC outbreak which so far involves 41 reported cases and 19 deaths.
A first batch of 4000 #Ebola vaccine doses just arrived to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Additional doses should be deployed in the coming days to #DRC.
There are ongoing preparations to start the ring vaccination as soon as possible. pic.twitter.com/BydsRquLPR— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) May 16, 2018
“This is the first time it’ll be used in a new outbreak,” said John-Arne Røttingen, chief executive of the Research Council of Norway, who worked on the Ebola vaccine trials. “(Health officials) will vaccinate early on and hopefully before the epidemic takes off.”
This marks a rare public health success story involving a neglected disease, and it’s worth celebrating.
The 2013-’16 West Africa Ebola epidemic caused more than 11,000 deaths — but also sparked a funding surge focused on preventing the disease. The tragedy got the public and private sector galvanized around pushing an Ebola vaccine candidate through the clinical trials process.
