Vaccines Face Same Mistrust That Fed Ebola

NEW YORK TIMES  by NORIMITSU ONISHI and SHERI FINK        March 14, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia — West Africa’s Ebola epidemic may be waning, but another outbreak in the future is a near certainty, health officials say.

Now, the United States is helping to lead a large study of two vaccines against Ebola. But as researchers try to compress a clinical process that can take a decade into a fraction of the time, they are confronting the same volatile mix of skepticism, fear, false rumor and understandable mistrust that helped spread Ebola in the first place.

Tribal chiefs and community leaders in Marampa, Sierra Leone, learned about an Ebola vaccine study at a meeting last month. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times

“When we look at Ebola, it came from America,” said Sylvester George, a pastor’s assistant, expressing doubts about the clinical trials at an information session. “It’s a man-made virus. So why didn’t they do this trial in America, but they decide to come to Liberia?”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/world/africa/ebola-vaccine-researchers-fight-to-overcome-public-skepticism-in-west-africa.html?_r=0