WHO Warns Ebola Vaccine May Take Nine Months as Death Toll Rises

World Health Organization has warned that it could take between six and nine months before a vaccine targeting the current Bundibugyo strain of Ebola becomes available, as the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to worsen.

Speaking in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there are now about 600 suspected Ebola cases and 139 suspected deaths linked to the outbreak, although officials believe the actual figures could be significantly higher due to delays in detecting infections.

According to the WHO, 51 cases have so far been confirmed in eastern DR Congo, particularly in Ituri and North Kivu provinces, while two confirmed cases have been recorded in neighbouring Uganda after infected persons travelled from DR Congo. One of the Ugandan patients has died.

Tedros said the organisation had declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern but stressed that it had not reached pandemic status.

“WHO assesses the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels and low at the global level,” he said.

WHO adviser Dr Vasee Moorthy disclosed that two experimental vaccines against the Bundibugyo species are currently under development, but neither has completed clinical trials.

“This needs to be prioritised as the most promising Bundibugyo candidate vaccine,” Moorthy said of one of the vaccine projects, adding that it was “likely to take six to nine months” before it could be ready for use.

He explained that the second candidate vaccine, developed using technology similar to the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, could enter clinical trials within two to three months, although uncertainty remains over its effectiveness.

Health officials say the outbreak is proving especially difficult to contain because Bundibugyo Ebola is rare and there are currently no approved vaccines or specific treatments for the strain.

The first known patient in the current outbreak was a nurse who died in April in Bunia, the capital of Ituri Province, before the virus spread to nearby communities, including mining towns.

Local health workers say hospitals are becoming overwhelmed by suspected cases, while shortages of protective equipment continue to expose frontline workers to infection.

Médecins Sans Frontières emergency programme manager Trish Newport described the situation as critical.

“Health facilities are telling us, ‘We are full of suspect cases. We don’t have any space’,” she said.

The WHO also noted that healthcare workers are among those who have died, raising fears over the strain being placed on the fragile health system in eastern DR Congo, a region already affected by years of armed conflict and humanitarian crises.

The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola was first identified in Uganda in 2007 and later reappeared in DR Congo in 2012. Although it is considered less deadly than the Zaire strain, officials say its rarity means fewer medical tools are available to contain it.

Source: bbc