Dr-Margaret-ChanSTILL in search of an effective and safe cure for the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), the World Health Organisation (WHO) has set January 2015 for larger medical trials in West Africa on two experimental vaccines.

   An assistant Director General for WHO, Dr Marie Paule Kieny, said yesterday that clinical trials either planned or underway in Europe, Africa and the United States (U.S.) were expected to produce preliminary safety data by December.         

   In the meantime, she said, governments were pushing for immediate “real-world use” of an approved Ebola vaccine.

   Kieny told reporters yesterday at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, that there were two leading candidates for a vaccine. “If the vaccines are deemed safe, tens of thousands of doses will be used in trials in West Africa beginning in January to test their effectiveness,” she said.

   One of those vaccines, developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline from a modified chimpanzee cold virus and an Ebola protein, is in clinical trials in the UK and in Mali. It will be used in clinical trials in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the start of February.

   The second front-runner, developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and known as VSV-EBOV, has been sent to the U.S. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland for testing on healthy volunteers, with results expected by December. The next stage would be to test it more broadly, including among those directly handling Ebola cases in West Africa.

   Kieny said: “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 (today) 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.” 

   She added: “These data are absolutely crucial to allow decision-making on what dose level should go in the efficacy testing in Africa. There are 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.”

   Efforts to test experimental vaccines in Nigeria by the Expert Committee on Ebola/Ebola Treatment Research Group are being hampered by paucity of funds.

   The Co-chair of the Committee set up by President Goodluck Jonathan and Director General of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) Yaba, Lagos, Prof. Innocent Ujah, told The Guardian yesterday: “To consolidate on the gains made by the country despite being in the news recently mostly for the wrong reasons, there must be more funding for research.”

   Ujah said the Treatment Research Group was putting together a protocol because they had to go into clinical trials of experimental drugs and vaccines. He said the private sector should put in place funds for research into Ebola and other infectious diseases and that other countries must come and learn from Nigeria.

    Ujah, however, said that the Nigerian population must continue to ensure a high level of hygiene.

By Chukwuma Muanya