Ebola Vaccine Success

Ebola Vaccine Success: AHF Says, “World Must Proceed in All Due Haste and With All Financial Resources Necessary”

The Guardian newspaper reports today that an Ebola vaccine trial in Guinea was shown to be 100% effective in a trial involving 4,000 people, noting that, “The results of the trials … are remarkable because of the unprecedented speed with which the development of the vaccine and the testing were carried out.”

AHF is calling on world leaders and public health organizations to do whatever it takes to quickly bring this vaccine to development and to those in need, particularly in West Africa, where people are still contracting—and dying—of Ebola. To date, 27,748 people have become infected and 11,279 have died.

WASHINGTON (July 31, 2015) AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) today cheered the news that an Ebola vaccine trial in the West African country of Guinea was shown to be 100% effective in trials involving 4,000 people. The Guardian reported news of the success of the trials, noting, “The results of the trials … are remarkable because of the unprecedented speed with which the development of the vaccine and the testing were carried out.”

“After a poorly managed global response to the Ebola outbreak last year, news of the phenomenal successes of these vaccine trials in Guinea—100% efficacy in a trial cohort of 4,000 patients—is simply tremendous,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “ World leaders such as the United States, the UK and others as well as leading global public health organizations must step up now with all due haste and all financial resources necessary to quickly bring this vaccine to development and to those in need, particularly in West Africa, where people are still contracting—and dying—of Ebola.”

According to the Guardian article, 27,748 people have become infected with Ebola as of July 26, 2015 and of those, 11,279 have died.

AHF has lost two physicians to Ebola: Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, the physician who had been leading Sierra Leone’s response to Ebola in 2014 and who also served as Medical Officer for AHF’s Country Program there, died July 29, 2014; andDr. John Taban Dada, a Ugandan national living and working in Monrovia, Liberia, who died from Ebola on October 9, 2014.

ENDS

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