An effective Ebola vaccine is at hand, says WHO

An effective Ebola vaccine is in the making, the World Health Organisation, WHO, has announced. This development followed results of an interim analysis of the high effectiveness of an experimental vaccine, called the VSV-EBOV, manufactured by Merck, Sharp & Dohme.

The global health body says hopes of a line of defence against the terrible disease are high, in view of preliminary results of the analyses of the Guinea Phase III efficacy vaccine trial on the VSV-EBOV vaccine. 

Tests conducted by an independent body of international experts - the Data and Safety Monitoring Board are promising.

"This is an extremely promising development. The credit goes to the Guinean Government, the people living in the communities and our partners in this project. An effective vaccine will be another very important tool for both current and future Ebola outbreaks," said WHO Director-General of the  Dr Margaret Chan.

Although the vaccine shows 100 percent efficacy in individuals, more conclusive evidence is needed on its capacity to protect populations through what is called “herd immunity”. To that end, the Guinean national regulatory authority and ethics review committee have approved continuation of the trial.

Guinea's national coordinator for the Ebola response. Dr Sakoba Keita, described the feat as "Guinea’s gift to West Africa and the world.”  

Director of the Division of Infectious Disease Control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and Chair of the Study Steering Group, John-Arne Røttingen explained that “The 'ring' vaccination method adopted for the vaccine trial is based on the smallpox eradication strategy.

By vaccinating all people who have come into contact with an infected person, a protective 'ring' is created to stop the virus from spreading further. This strategy has helped scientists to follow the dispersed epidemic in Guinea, and will provide a way to continue this as a public health intervention in trial mode.

The Guinea vaccination trial began in affected communities on 23 March 2015 to evaluate the efficacy, effectiveness and safety of a single dose of the vaccine VSV-EBOV by using a ring vaccination strategy.

To date, over 4 000 close contacts of almost 100 Ebola patients, including family members, neighbours, and co-workers, have voluntarily participated in the trial.

There are plans to include 13 to 17-year-old and possibly 6 to 12-year-old children on the basis of new evidence of the vaccine’s safety.

Ebola disrupts birth records in Liberia, poses exploitation risk

The Ebola epidemic has disrupted birth registrations in Liberia, leaving at least 70,000 children without citizenship and in danger of being trafficked or illegally adopted, says the  United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has said.

The closure of health facilities and limited health services due to the Ebola outbreak has halted Liberia's progress in registering births in recent years, according to UNICEF, which is worried that without identities, these children may be unable to access basic health and social services. 

“No child should suffer the indignity, or not have protection from a state or other entities, and be unable to access basic services that are every child's right just because of a lack of a registered identity,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s Representative in Liberia, said in a statement.

“We cannot, and should never let that happen,”  Yett said in Monrovia over the weekend. 

UNICEF said that birth registrations in 2014 and 2015 had dropped sharply from pre-Ebola levels.

In 2013, before the onset of the virus, the births of 79,000 children were registered. In 2014, when many health facilities had closed or had reduced services due to the Ebola response, the number of registrations fell to 48,000 – a 39 per cent decrease over the previous year.

And “just 700 children are reported to have had their births registered between January and May 2015,”  UNICEF confirmed.

“Children who have not been registered at birth officially don’t exist,” according to Mr. Yett. “Without citizenship, children in Liberia, who have already experienced terrible suffering because of Ebola, risk marginalization because they may be unable to access basic health and social services, obtain identity documents, and will be in danger of being trafficked or illegally adopted.”

Prior to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which has killed more than 11,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, UNICEF had helped increase birth registration rates in Liberia from 4 per cent – then the world’s second lowest rate – to 25 per cent in 2013.

Ebola resurfaced in Liberia last month after the country had been declared free of the disease, but there were no new cases reported according to the latest epidemic update, released 29 July by the World Health Organization (WHO).

In that same update, WHO reported that there are only seven confirmed cases of Ebola reported in the week to 26 July: 4 in Guinea and 3 in Sierra Leone.

“This is the lowest weekly total for over a year, and comes after 8 consecutive weeks during which case incidence had plateaued at between 20 and 30 cases per week,” WHO said, but cautioned that “although this decline in case incidence is welcome, it is too early to tell whether it will be sustained.”