Ebola vaccine may be tested for the first time in DRC

To address the fresh outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) may deploy an experimental Ebola vaccine against the scourge for the first time since the United Nations (U.N.) agency gave it preliminary approval in April 2017.

A report published yesterday by the journal Nature, the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders) is discussing a potential vaccination campaign with the Congolese government.

That would require the approval of the WHO, which has not decided whether to call on the approved experimental vaccine or others in the development. WHO spokesperson, Tarik Jašarević, said: “We are taking this outbreak seriously because Ebola is always serious.”


The most recent outbreak of the virus, in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, killed 11,325 people; there have been several known outbreaks in the DRC, but none has been as severe as the West Africa’s.
According to Nature, there are now 12 candidates of Ebola vaccines in development. None is yet approved for sale, in part because the candidates were not ready for testing until there was marked reduction in the West African Ebola crisis.

But on April 27, 2017 the WHO’s advisory group on immunization recommended that an experimental vaccine called rVSV-SEBOV be deployed promptly should an Ebola outbreak arise.