2014 Start of Ebola Vaccine

NIAID DIRECTOR ANTHONY FAUCI ON EBOLA VACCINE

In 2014 the US National Institutes of Health reported clinical trials of an ebola vaccine would begin in 2014, with human testing possibly starting in 2015.

Anthony Fauci said, “You want to balance the need to get a potentially effective vaccine to the people who need it as quickly as possible at the same time that you structure it in a way that you can get some meaningful information as to, (a) whether it does work or not, and whether it does harm… We’ve had experience with vaccines that you actually think they will prevent infection and they make things worse.”

Fauci said its those who are given the vaccine have to be monitored.

He said it is very different to providing experimental drugs to treat ebola.

It’s not like a drug in which you a giving to a very sick person who has no other option, a vaccine is given to a healthy person. So the idea of do no harm is much much more compelling when you are dealing with someone who is a normal healthy person versus someone who is desperately ill and has no form of therapy but needs something.

The World Health Organised asked for half a billion dollars to address the issue.

Even if the vaccine is effective it’s not the answer to the current outbrake. Fauci said, “We have an ongoing epidemic. We do not have a vaccine, so that’s a hypothetical. We do not have drugs, so that’s a hypothetical. Right now what we do have is infection control, isolation, quarantine and contact tracing. That. is what is going to bring this epidemic under control.”

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