Conakry

Researchers are scrambling to start trials before the outbreak fades, but establishing faith in vaccines will take time

AL JAZEERA AMERICA  by Amy Maxmen                       March 11, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Since Ebola hit this coastal city last summer, nurses at Connaught Hospital have put their lives on the line by working with patients at risk of the deadly disease. Now researchers aim to recruit them as well as ambulance drivers and other hospital staff as subjects in one of the largest Ebola vaccine trials to date.

But just a few weeks before the trial begins enrollment, many health care workers are voicing discomfort about the shot. “It would be really good to have a vaccine, but we’re scared because it’s new,” said Kadiatu Nubieu, a nurse at Connaught.

WHO PRESS RELEASE                                                March 10, 2015

The WHO Director-General has commissioned a panel of outside independent experts to undertake an assessment on all aspects of WHO’s response in the Ebola outbreak. This is in response to a resolution passed during the Ebola Special Session of the Executive Board in January 2015.

Dame Barbara Stocking will chair the panel. She was formerly Chief Executive of Oxfam GB (2001-13) and during this time led major humanitarian responses. Currently she is President of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK.

The other panel members are: Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfun, Director-General of the National Institute for Biomedical Research, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Dr Faisal Shuaib, Head of the National Ebola Emergency Operations Center, Nigeria; Dr Carmencita Alberto-Banatin, independent consultant and advisor on health emergencies and disasters, Philippines; Professor Julio Frenk, Dean of the Faculty, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; and Professor Ilona Kickbusch, Director of the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland.

The panel will present a first progress report on its work to the 68th World Health Assembly in May 2015.

MEDICALXPRESS                                                                                                 March 9, 2015
Researchers from Emory and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have now obtained a first look at the immune responses in four Ebola virus disease survivors who received care at Emory University Hospital in 2014, by closely examining their T cells and B cells during the acute phase of the disease. The findings reveal surprisingly high levels of immune activation, and have implications for the current effort to develop vaccines against Ebola.

The Ebola virus, isolated in November 2014 from patient blood samples obtained in Mali. The virus was isolated on Vero cells in a BSL-4 suite at Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Credit: NIAID