In Liberia start testing with Ebola vaccines

In Liberia start testing with Ebola vaccines

03/02/2015

Liberia is one of the three countries most affected by the Ebola epidemic, which has been rampant for over a year. A vaccine or a cure is not yet available. But now vaccines against the deadly infectious disease have started testing in the West African country.

Tests with vaccines have begun
In addition to Sierra Leone and Guinea, Liberia is one of the three nations most affected by the Ebola epidemic, which has been rampant for over a year. According to the United Nations, nearly 9,000 people in West Africa have died of the dangerous disease since the outbreak of the epidemic. Despite intensive research, neither vaccine nor remedies are still available. Infected people only receive typical Ebola symptoms. But in Liberia, vaccine testing has begun.

First volunteers arrived in the capital
According to a message from the AP news agency, first volunteers arrived in Monrovia on Monday. According to the report, the test series organized the Liberian government with the help of the United States. In the presence of representatives from the US Embassy and the World Health Organization (WHO), Vice President Joseph Nyumah Boakai gave the go-ahead. To AP he said that the vaccines „very important for Liberia and the world“ are. According to a report by the AFP news agency, the vaccine ChAd3 of the British company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as well as the vaccine rVSV-ZEBOV developed by the Canadian health authority and produced by the US lab Merck are being tested.

All clear in Berlin
Meanwhile, a reassuring message came from Germany. The Ebola suspicion in Berlin is apparently malaria, the Charité now shared. The patient, who had reported after a stay in Africa with influenza-like symptoms in the Kreuzberg Urban Hospital and was transferred to the Virchow Hospital of the Charité, suffers from malaria. The diagnosis of Ebola is fundamentally difficult in the early stages of the disease because the symptoms are similar to those of a conventional flu. (Ad)