Ebola: UN says experimental vaccine trials in West Africa could begin by January

The  (WFP)  said the Ebola crisis response “needs to scale up, get better and perform faster,” as the UN health agency reported that if judged safe, larger scale trials of an experimental vaccine could be taken to hard-hit West African countries as early as January 2015. The UN World Health organization (WHO) also said “evidence is mounting that earlier messages about Ebola virus disease having no treatment, cure, or vaccines are no longer entirely accurate.” WHO cited a number of candidate vaccines were undergoing clinical trials as well as the first clinical trials of therapeutic – possibly curative – transfusions of whole blood or blood plasma from recovered patients that are scheduled to begin soon in Liberia, in line with WHO technical guidelines. At the end of a three-day visit to Sierra Leone, WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin called upon partners all over the world to work together to address the critical needs...