NEW YORK – Canada’s International Development Minister, Christian Paradis, on Friday, said poor global coordination hampered Canada’s efforts to deliver its Ebola vaccine to Africa.
He said in New York that the vaccine remained in a government laboratory as Canadian and WHO officials grapple with logistic and ethical issues.
He added that “Canada is deeply concerned by the inadequate coordination efforts on Ebola, but we are not singling out any country or organisation for blame.’’
Six weeks ago the Canadian government promised to donate between 800 and 1,000 doses of its VSV-EBOV vaccine to the World Health Organisation (WHO) for use in Africa.
[eap_ad_2] Paradis said Canada would commit 27 million dollars more in humanitarian aid to people affected by the outbreak.
Greg Taylor, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, said the country hope to deliver the vaccine to the WHO within three weeks for storage.
He, however, said he was not sure when the affected people in West Africa would get access to the vaccine.
Taylor said the vaccine had proven effective in tests on animals, but there was anecdotal evidence that other experimental treatments might not work on a person who first received the vaccine.
“You want to make sure you’re not doing harm. We don’t know what the right dose is, we don’t know if this will actually work in humans,” he, however, added.
A WHO panel said last month that it was ethical to offer unproven drugs to people infected by Ebola in West Africa but that such use required informed consent.
Iowa-based NewLink Genetics Corp holds the commercial licence for the Canadian vaccine and said in August that it would be able to produce tens of thousands of vaccine doses within a month or two.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed the company to start human testing of the vaccine. (Reuters/NAN)
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