TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The World Health Organisation has announced it hopes to begin testing two experimental Ebola vaccines in west Africa by January and may have a blood serum available for use in Liberia within two weeks as it presses the search for medical treatments to stop the spread of the disease, as reported by The Guardian.

The UN’s health agency said it aimed to begin testing the two vaccines in the new year on more than 20,000 frontline health care workers and others in west Africa – a bigger rollout than previously envisioned.

Dr Marie Paule Kieny, an assistant director general at the WHO, acknowledged there were many “ifs” remaining and “still a possibility that it [a vaccine] will fail”. But she sketched out a much broader experiment than was imagined only six months ago, saying the WHO hoped to dispense tens of thousands of doses in the first months of the new year.

“These are quite large trials,” she said, as quoted by The Guardian.

Kieny said in remarks reported by the BBC that a serum was also being developed for use in Liberia based on antibodies extracted from the blood of Ebola survivors. “There are partnerships which are starting to be put in place to have capacity in the three countries to safely extract plasma and make preparation that can be used for the treatment of infective patients.

“The partnership which is moving the quickest will be in Liberia where we hope that in the coming weeks there will be facilities set up to collect the blood, treat the blood and be able to process it for use.”

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the agency expected 20,000 vaccinations in January and similar numbers in the months afterwards using the trial products.

THE GUARDIAN