GENEVA, October 14 (RIA Novosti) -The Ebola vaccine will be available for mass use in summer 2015 at the earliest, the assistant director general of the World Health organization (WHO) told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
"I think by January we will be able of doing larger scale studies with this thing. But in terms of large scale use, no, not until middle of the next year. That's our target," Bruce Aylward said, answering a question on when an Ebola vaccine would be ready for mass use.
Earlier the WHO said that the first anti-Ebola vaccine could be available as early as November 2014 and would first be given to the health care workers most at risk of exposure to the disease. The vaccine had been expected to become available for mass use early in 2015.The organization said that the Canadian VSV-EBOV vaccine and the ChAd-EBO vaccine developed by the British GlaxoSmithKlein are the most promising counters to Ebola.
The Ebola virus is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of the infected. There is no officially approved medication for the disease, but several countries are currently working on developing Ebola vaccines, with Russia planning to introduce three vaccines within the next six months.
