The coronavirus changed the world a year and a half ago and has turned masks into a daily essential. Now that the vaccine covid-19 It seems that it is reducing the number of infections and deaths, one wonders why other viruses that have been killing thousands of people in Africa for decades are still active.
Is there a vaccine against Ebola?
The coronavirus vaccine has shown that, when there is a budget, science has the ability to respond quickly to a health emergency. But Ebola is not the coronavirus, and where it has more incidence is in poor countries without funds for research.
The disease was first detected in 1976 and according to reports WHO, Ebola outbreaks have a fatality rate of approximately 50%. The lack of medical resources and the difficulty of accessing the population exacerbate the problem.
The last great Ebola epidemic it was between 2014 and 2016. More people died in those years than in the previous 24 outbreaks combined. The first experimental vaccine was approved more than 40 years later.
The Ervebo Ebola Zaire vaccine was authorized in 2019 by the European Medicines Agency and the US Food and Drug Administration and approved by eight African countries. Between 2018 and 2020, the Ebola vaccine was implemented in response to three separate epidemics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has been shown to be effective in protecting people at risk and reducing transmission of the virus.
To try that the ebola vaccine reaches more and more people, a reserve has been created in Switzerland managed by an International Coordination Group. However, the doses are still very limited.
“The limited size of the pool should not restrict studies on the vaccination strategies more appropriate (…). Research should continue to adapt this vaccine to the contexts in which Ebola epidemics occur, moving towards the creation of a more stable product that does not require a complex cold chain for storage and transport “, explains Natalie Roberts, responsible of the Médecins Sans Frontières epidemic response projects.
Meanwhile, they are trying to strengthen community surveillance and incorporate the latest instruments to slowly make each new outbreak less deadly.
Ebola in Spain
Ebola shook our country seven years ago. In October 2014 we learned that nurse Teresa Romero had been infected with Ebola in Spain. She was caring for the Spanish missionary Manuel García Viejo, who had been repatriated after falling ill with Ebola in Sierra Leone.
For a week it was feared that there had been more infections in the Hospital where the nurse was treated for the first time. Meanwhile, her health was getting worse and putting her life at risk, but thanks to the serum of another missionary who had managed to overcome the disease, Teresa Romero got out of danger and defeated Ebola. On November 5, 2014, he was discharged from the hospital.
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