Following successful tests of Ebola vaccine on monkeys, human trials have begun in the United States and will be extended to the United Kingdom and to Africa, according to a BBC report.
The experiments by the US National Institutes of Health showed immunity could last at least 10 months. Vaccinated monkeys have developed “long-term” immunity to the Ebola virus, raising a prospect of successful human trials, scientists say.
According to the World Health Organisation, more than 2,000 people have now died in the outbreak in West Africa.
There are several experimental treatments are to help contain the spread of Ebola including a vaccine being developed by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, reports say.
It uses a genetically modified chimp virus containing components of two species of Ebola – Zaire, which is currently circulating in West Africa, and the common Sudan species.
The viral vaccine does not replicate inside the body, but it is hoped the immune system will react to the Ebola component of the vaccine and develop immunity.
This outbreak of Ebola has claimed seven lives with 21 infections in Nigeria since the index patient, a Liberian, Patrick Sawyer brought the deadly disease to Nigeria in July 2014. Nigeria has recorded the best containment of the spread of the disease.
