First batch of Ebola vaccine set to arrive in Liberia

The first batch of experimental Ebola vaccine from pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was due to arrive in Liberia on Friday, providing a boost to public health officials hopeful to stem the spread of the disease, which has killed more than 8,000 people to date.

GSK sent an initial shipment of 300 vials of vaccine ahead of the rollout of a mass clinical trial. Health care workers in the country to help care for Ebola patients are expected to be among the first to receive the drug. The disease has killed hundreds of doctors and nurses in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — the three worst hit Ebola-affected countries — taking a severe toll on the health care systems of West Africa. 

Sierra Leone has seen the most cases of the virus, but Liberia leads the three in number of deaths at 3,605, according to latest World Health Organization (WHO) figures. The disease spread quickly this summer through the country's capital Monrovia, where poverty and lack of sanitation helped quicken transmission.  

GSK said Friday’s delivery would be just the beginning. Researchers hope to enroll up to 30,000 people in the trial, a third of whom would get GSK's candidate vaccine. The rest will serve as a control group to gauge the effectiveness of the drug. 

The vaccine arrives at a crucial time in the fight against Ebola, with health officials fearing that the April-May rainy season will hamper efforts to provide medical relief to remote regions.

Moncef Slaoui, GSK’s global vaccines chief, said initial tests “give confidence to progress to the next phases...which will involve the vaccination of thousands of volunteers, including frontline health care workers.”

The vaccine, co-developed by the National Institutes of Health in the United States and Okairos, a bio-technology firm acquired by GSK in 2013, is now being tested in safety trials in Britain, the United States, Switzerland and Mali involving around 200 healthy volunteers. The vaccine uses a type of chimpanzee cold virus to deliver genetic material from the Zaire strain of Ebola, the strain responsible for the West African epidemic.

Slaoui stressed that GSK's vaccine, like those under development by other companies, cannot be deployed widely in the field until it proves safe and effective. Other drug companies working on Ebola vaccines include Johnson & Johnson, Bavarian Nordic, and a collaboration between NewLink Genetics and Merck. 

It comes as the New York Times reports that health officials in the United States have struggled to produce significant amounts of ZMapp, a drug that has shown promise in treating the symptoms of Ebola, which include severe internal bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea — a combination that can cause a rapid, painful death through organ failure and dehydration.

The WHO said Thursday that the West Africa Ebola outbreak, the worst in history, appears to be waning, but it cautioned against complacency. The epidemic has seen 21,724 cases reported in nine countries since it started in Guinea a year ago. Some 8,641 people have died.

In a sign of progress, officials in Sierra Leone announced on Thursday that it had lifted quarantine measures that were previously in place in six of 14 districts. Sierra Leone has recorded more Ebola cases than any other country, with 10,340 recorded cases. The WHO reports that the number of cases is falling week by week. "Case incidence continues to fall in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone," according to the latest situation report, "with a halving time of 1.4 weeks in Guinea, 2.0 weeks Liberia, and 2.7 weeks in Sierra Leone."

Al Jazeera and wire services