The race against time (two #ebola vaccines)

The first time Dr Ripley Ballou, Vice President of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Biologicals, contacted the World Health Organization (WHO) about a promising Ebola vaccine candidate, it was 24 March 2014 – the day WHO issued news of the Ebola virus disease outbreak in Guinea.
“I was told that since there were no human data, there were no policies or pathways for its use in the current outbreak,” Ballou recalls. ”There was also a strong belief that the usual approach of containments would stop the outbreak.”
When WHO called Ballou a few months later the picture had changed, and on 8 August WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
“We realized this outbreak was different and the approach used successfully in previous outbreaks – detecting and isolating cases, identifying contacts and safely burying the deceased – was not working,” says Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation.
Within a month, Kieny and her team hosted a gathering of more than 200 of the world’s leading vaccine experts from industry, academia and regulatory authorities as well as public health officials from the countries affected and experts in filoviruses and viral haemorrhagic diseases.
REFERENCE:
“The Race against Time.”
Bulletin of the World Health Organization 93.1 (2015): 7–8. PMC. Web. 24 June 2015.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sigue este Blog en Facebook y Twitter