The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) is to introduce a second vaccine next month to combat the Ebola virus, which has killed more than 2,100 people in the country, the WHO said yesterday.
The announcement came as the aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) accused the WHO of rationing the first Ebola vaccine in the DRC.
“The health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have announced plans to introduce a second experimental Ebola vaccine, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson, from mid-October,” the WHO said in a statement. “This vaccine, which is given as a two-dose course, 56 days apart, will be provided under approved protocols to targeted at-risk populations in areas that do not have active Ebola transmission as an additional tool to extend protection against the virus.”
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WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said the second vaccine “will help ensure that we have potentially an additional tool to prevent the expansion of the outbreak and also a potential tool to protect populations before outbreaks hit areas at risk.”
The ongoing Ebola outbreak is the second-worst one in history after more than 11,000 people were killed in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016.
The WHO last week said that as of Tuesday, the DRC had registered a total of 3,145 cases of Ebola since the outbreak began over a year ago, including 2,103 deaths.
It has declared the Ebola epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern.”
About 225,000 people have received the Ebola vaccine manufactured by German pharmaceutical giant Merck since Aug. 8 last year.
However, MSF earlier yesterday said that “this number remains largely insufficient.”
“One of the main problems currently is the fact that in practice the vaccine is rationed by the WHO and that too few people at risk are protected today,” MSF said in a statement.
The WHO denied limiting the availability of the drug, saying it was doing “everything possible” to end the epidemic.
The UN’s health agency has been pushing for the introduction of the second vaccine, but the DRC Ministry of Public Health ministry under former minister Oly Ilunga had resisted such a move, citing the risks of introducing a new product in communities where mistrust of Ebola responders is already high.
Ilunga stepped down on July 22 after being replaced as the head of the DRC’s Ebola response effort.
He has since been charged with embezzling funds allotted for the Ebola fight, according to his lawyers, who reject the allegations saying accounts prove that public funds were used “exclusively” for the anti-Ebola effort.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, praised the latest decision by the DRC’s authorities, who he said “have once again shown leadership and their determination to end this outbreak as soon as possible.”
This stands in contrasts with the WHO’s criticism over the weekend of Tanzanian authorities, which it said had refused to share the results of its investigations into a number of patients with Ebola-like symptoms, “despite several requests,” and were refusing to ship patient samples to an outside WHO partner lab.
Tanzania has previously said it has no Ebola cases.
Additional reporting by AP
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