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Race for Ebola Vaccine for West Africa: Another Ebola Vaccine Due to be tested in West Africa / Africa News

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has disclosed that serum made from the blood of recovered Ebola patients could be available as early as next week in the three West African countries badly hit by the Ebola disease.

Serum is the blood plasma that is neither a blood cell nor a clotting factor and WHO’s officials say it has been used once to treat a Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola some weeks ago. The nurse has tested negative after the drug was administered to her.

Unlike ZMapp which failed to make any impact, this new serum made from the blood of recovered Ebola patients is expected to at least save some few lives.

Experts working on the vaccine suggest that if a person has been able to survive the virus, it means their body has learned how to combat the virus and they will have antibodies in their blood that can attack Ebola.

Samples of survivors’ blood can be taken by doctors and turn into a serum by a process of removing the red blood cells but keeping the important antibodies which can be used to treat other patients suffering from the disease.

But blood taken from survivors must be thoroughly screened to avoid other blood related diseases such as HIV/AIDS blood samples being used for the manufacturing of the drug.

Assistant Director General for Health System and Innovation at the World Health Organization, Dr Marie Paule Kieny told a news conference in Geneva that more efforts are being made to get recovered Ebola patients to donate their blood for the drug to be produced in more quantity.

“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”, she said.

Ebola has killed almost 4,600 people across the three most-affected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. There are concerns that the disease may collapse the economies of these countries.

The European Union said it has spent more than 500m Euros for the fight against the disease while the UK is still pressing for more funds to be made available to help the worse affected countries.

The Director for the Center of Disease Control (CDC) in the United States, Dr. Thomas Frieden has said that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is likely to become the next HIV/AIDS the world has to fight.

According to health experts, Ebola Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and breakdown of central nervous system. The disease is said to spread by body fluids such as blood or saliva.

Fatality rate is said to be around 90% but current outbreak has a mortality rate of about 55% and incubation period is 2 to 21 days. There is no proven vaccine or cure as at now but supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhea and vomiting can help recovery.

Issaka Adams / NationalTurk Africa News

Writer’s Email Address: Adamsisska@googlemail.com

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