LONDON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- BBC, or British Broadcasting Corporation, Wednesday reported that a trial of an experimental vaccine against the Ebola virus is beginning in Oxford.
The first group of 60 healthy volunteers will be injected with the vaccine, which is being developed by by GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical giant, and the US National Institutes of Health.
The experimental vaccine is being fast tracked at an astonishing rate due to the urgency of the epidemic, said the British media outlet.
Normally it would "take years" of human trials before a completely new vaccine was approved for use, reported BBC.
The Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, and the UK Department for International Development are funding the trials.
As of Sept. 16, the total number of cases attributed to Ebola virus disease in West Africa had reached 4,985, including 2,461 deaths. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are the three hardest-hit countries.
LAGOS, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday said there was currently no case of Ebola disease in the country.
"Presently, there is no Ebola case in Nigeria; nobody in Nigeria has the disease now and most of the people who came down with the disease have recovered. Out of the 19, we lost seven and the others have recovered, although there a few people we are still observing," he made the remarks in the nation's capital of Abuja. Full story
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Ebola virus that has become rampant in West Africa will enormously hurt fragile economic growth of the three hard-hit nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone if it goes unchecked, the World Bank Group (WBG) warned Wednesday.
The World Bank said this year, the economic growth rate in Guinea will fall to 2.4 percent from 4.5 percent; for Sierra Leone, to 8 percent from 11.3 percent; and for Liberia, to 2.5 percent from 5.9 percent. Full story
