WHO: Ebola vaccine trials to start next year

Associated Press

GENEVA

The World Health Organization is pressing the search for an Ebola vaccine and hopes to begin testing two experimental versions as early as January on more than 20,000 front-line health care workers and others in West Africa’s hot zone — a bigger rollout than envisioned just a few months ago.

An effective vaccine would not in itself be enough to stop the outbreak — for one thing, there probably won’t be enough doses to go around — but it could give important protection to the medical workers who are central to the effort. More than 200 of them have died of the disease.

The WHO, which has come under fire for bungling its initial reaction to the Ebola crisis, is helping coordinate trials of two of the most promising experimental vaccines.

The real-world testing in West Africa will go forward only if the vaccines prove safe and trigger an adequate immune-system response in volunteers during clinical trials that are either underway or planned in Europe, Africa and the U.S.