In an effort to combat the nation’s first viral fever outbreak, which has killed 11 people so far, Rwanda’s health minister announced on Thursday that the country will begin clinical trials of novel vaccinations and treatments for Marburg disease in the coming weeks.
36 instances have been documented since the sickness was discovered in late September, according to statistics from the health ministry.
“This is part of our efforts to help people recover quickly by utilising vaccines and medicines specifically developed to fight this outbreak, currently in the final phase of research,” the minister, Sabin Nsanzimana, told Reuters.
“We are collaborating with the pharmaceutical companies that developed these, alongside the World Health Organization, to expedite the process through multilateral collaboration.”
In order to expedite access to vaccination and treatment doses for trials, the WHO stated that it was collaborating with the government and had convened a conference of industrial, academic, and government partners.
During the Marburg outbreaks, it granted ethical permission for these kinds of experiments and stated that obtaining a comparable approval from the Rwandan government was the next critical step. According to an email from a spokesman, the funds has also been released by the WHO, the Canadian government, and the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) of the European Union.
WHO has assessed four vaccine candidates for possible use in trials, but only one—produced by the nonprofit Sabin Vaccine Institute—had results from preliminary human studies demonstrating safety and eliciting an immune response. Because of the hazards, it is not possible to test the vaccinations further outside of outbreak situations.
