Director-General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control Jean Kaseya said Tuesday that the continent should begin making vaccines locally, as the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak continues to have a huge impact on the economies of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.
“It’s time for us to manufacture our own vaccines,” Kaseya said at Semafor’s The Next 3 Billion.
To date, 6,778 cases of Ebola and 3269 deaths have been documented in the current outbreak, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO announced an end to Uganda’s outbreak in late August, transmission is still ongoing in the DRC.
Kaseya said that even though it has been 19 years since the Bundibugyo virus strain was discovered, there is not yet a vaccine available. “You can imagine if here in the U.S., in Europe, we knew this Bundibugyo for 19 years, the vaccine would already be available,” Kaseya said.
A vaccine developed for the Zaire Ebola strain is currently in a Phase 3 trial to see if it can be used for Bundibugyo – and results are expected by the end of this year. There are clinical trials for multiple other vaccine candidates being pursued, but “it will take some time” to know if any are good matches for Bundibugyo, he added. The public health official estimated it may take about six months to determine if one is a specific vaccine for Bundibugyo.
He also said that it is not adequate for companies to say that they will manufacture vaccines abroad at no cost and bring them to Africa.