Ebola vaccine

The first large scale Ebola vaccine trial is underway in Liberia, one of the three major countries affected by the virus in West Africa. It is reported that the vaccine will be tested on an estimated thirty thousand people and this comes after successful clinical trials in Britain, the United States, Switzerland and Mali which involved two-hundred healthy volunteers. The outbreak has claimed the lives of more than eight-thousand-five-hundred people, the vast majority in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Channel Africa's Benjamin Moshatama earlier spoke to Dr Thomas Nyirenda; the South-South Networking and Capacity Development Manager at the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership, which is based at the Medical Research Council. In the same conversation he also spoke to Dr Margaret Harris, from the World Health Organisation's Ebola Director General's Office. Dr Harris emphasised that the vaccine is still at an experimental stage.