Ebola deaths climb above 4,000 In its latest update today the WHO said the global number of Ebola infections related to West Africas outbreak as of Oct 8 has reached 8,399 cases, with the number of deaths rising to 4,033. The numbers reflect an increase of 366 cases and 168 deaths from the totals the WHO reported 2 days ago. Other developments: An official from the WHO said the group is finalizing legal paperwork to accept doses of experimental Ebola vaccine donated by Canada and that the vaccine will be shipped to Geneva next week, the Canadian Press reported today. The 800 to 1,000 vials of vaccine could provide as many as 100,000, depending on the results of dosing studies. Marie-Paule Kieny, MD, the WHOs assistant director general for health systems and innovations, told the Canadian Press that the vaccine was safely stored in Canada while clinical trials details were being settled and that the Geneva hospital that will store it needed to purchase a freezer to keep it at the proper temperature. The attenuated vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) vaccine was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and is licensed by NewLink Genetics, based in Ames, Iowa. The first Africa-based trial of another experimental Ebola vaccine launched on Oct 8 in Mali, targeting healthcare workers, according to a press release yesterday from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, which is partnering in the research. The vaccine is a chimpanzee-derived adenovirus vector (cAd3) vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Myron Levine, MD, director of the schools center for vaccine development, said in the statement that the study will yield crucial information on whether the vaccine is safe, well tolerated, and effective in the highest priority target group: healthcare workers. If it works, in the foreseeable future it could help alter the dynamic of this epidemic by interrupting transmission to health care and other exposed front-line workers, he said.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 01:22:04 +0000
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