An experimental vaccine tested on thousands of people in Guinea exposed to Ebola seems to work and might help shut down the ongoing epidemic in West Africa, according to interim results from a study published Friday.
There is currently no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola, which has so far killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa since the world’s biggest outbreak began in the forest region of Guinea last year.
“If proven effective, this is going to be a game-changer,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, which sponsored the study. “It will change the management of the current outbreak and future outbreaks.”
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Doctor Francis Kateh, right, from Redemption Hospital volunteering to receive a trial vaccine against Ebola at Redemption Hospital on the outskirts of Monrovia. ZOOM DOSSO / AFP – Getty Images file
The Ebola virus has now killed more than 1,000 people in West Africa. Although the mortality rate of the most recent outbreak isn’t as high as in previous events, it’s still the case that most people who become infected with Ebola will not survive. (The mortality rate is about 60 percent for the current outbreak, compared with 90 percent in the past, according to the National Institutes of Health.)
But despite this somber prognosis, health experts in the United States aren’t particularly worried about the threat of Ebola in this country or in other developed countries.
The United States’ top disease detective calls Ebola a “painful, dreadful, merciless virus.”
The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak in West Africa an international emergency, killing more than 900 people and spreading.
That’s scary and serious. But it also cries out for context.
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This undated photo made available by the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, shows the Ebola virus viewed through an electron microscope. The World Health Organization on Friday, Aug. 8, 2014 declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread. (AP Photo/Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine) | ASSOCIATED PRESS
