Clinical trials of a preventative vaccine for the Ebola virus made by British pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline, may begin next month and be made available by 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
In a statement on its website, the WHO's head of vaccines and.immunisation, Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, told French radio at the weekend: "We are targeting September for the start of clinical trials, first in the United States and certainly in African countries, since that's where we have the cases.
"We are optimistic about making the vaccine commercially available; we think that if we start in September, we will have the results by the end of the year.
"And since this is an emergency, we can put emergency procedures in place … so that we can have a vaccine available by 2015," Jean-Marie said.
Several vaccines are being tested, and a treatment made by a San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, ZMapp, has shown promising results on monkeys and may have been effective in treating two Americans recently infected in Africa.
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