This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
CDC enrolling 6,000 Sierra Leone HCWs in Ebola vaccine trial
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The CDC announced today that it has begun the enrollment and vaccination of approximately 6,000 Sierra Leone health and front-line workers in an upcoming Ebola vaccine clinical trial.
“Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia have lost thousands to Ebola, including hundreds of health care workers,” Anne Schuchat, MD, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a telebriefing. “Vaccines against Ebola are a potential tool to protect people, especially those at the highest risk to contract the virus because of the work they do. Our study is part of a concerted effort to accelerate the development of vaccines against Ebola.”
The Sierra Leone Trial to Introduce a Vaccine against Ebola (STRIVE) is a joint effort between the CDC, the Sierra Leone College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences, and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation. It will assess the safety and efficacy of the recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV-ZEBOV) candidate vaccine, which was developed by Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory and licensed to NewLink Genetics.
Anne Schuchat
Volunteers will be randomly assigned to the experimental treatment immediately or in 6 months, and then will be observed for 6 months after vaccination. Participants will include those caring for Ebola patients in the Western Area Urban district of Sierra Leone.
According to a press release, previous studies of the rVSV-ZEBOV candidate vaccine have demonstrated an acceptable safety profile and signs of immune response. In addition, participants who have received the treatment are advised to maintain full preventive actions to protect themselves from Ebola infection.
Tom R. Frieden
“A safe and effective vaccine would be a very important tool to stop Ebola in the future, and the front-line workers who are volunteering to participate are making a decision that could benefit health care professionals and communities wherever Ebola is a risk,” CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden, MD, MPH, said in a press release. “We hope this vaccine will be proven effective, but in the meantime, we must continue doing everything necessary to stop this epidemic — find every case, isolate and treat, safely and respectfully bury the dead, and find every single contact.”