"The non-objection was given. Now there's a Medecins Sans Frontiers team that is arriving (in Congo) today to validate the protocol with the technical teams," a health ministry spokesman.
FILE PHOTO: Health workers push a gurney
with a dead body at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono
district in Eastern Sierra Leone December 19, 2014. (Source: Reuters)
Democratic Republic of Congo’s health ministry has approved the use
of a new Ebola vaccine to counter an outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever
in its northeast that has killed four people, a spokesman said on
Monday. “The non-objection was given. Now there’s a Medecins Sans
Frontiers team that is arriving (in Congo) today to validate the
protocol with the technical teams,” Jonathan Simba, a health ministry
spokesman, said by telephone.
The vaccine, known as rVSV-ZEBOV and developed by Merck , is not yet
licensed but was shown to be highly protective against Ebola in clinical
trials published last December.
As of Friday, Congo had registered 52 total suspected cases,
including two that have been confirmed, the World Health Organization
spokesman in Congo, Eugene Kabambi, said by telephone, adding that the
situation appears to be under control. Simba said that the details of
the vaccination campaign would be announced after a meeting of the
health ministry and its partners set to take place on Monday or Tuesday.
A vaccination campaign would present logistical challenges in Congo’s
isolated northeastern forests, including transporting and storing the
vaccine in special containers at the required minus 80 degrees Celsius.
source: indianexpress
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