Britain’s biggest drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline said on Saturday work to develop a vaccine to combat Ebola, which has killed thousands in West Africa, was moving at a rapid pace. From Reuters:
“Development of the vaccine candidate is progressing at an unprecedented rate, with first phase 1 safety trials with the vaccine candidate underway in the USA, UK and Mali, and further trials due to start in the coming weeks,” the firm said in a statement posted on its website.
The company said preliminary data from the trials was expected by the end of 2014 and that, if successful, the next phase, involving the vaccination of frontline healthcare workers in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, would begin in early 2015.
The worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed more than 4,500 people so far, most in the trio of West African countries.
In August, GSK said the experimental vaccine was being fast-tracked into human studies and it planned to build a stockpile of up to 10,000 doses for emergency deployment, if results were good.
The GSK vaccine consists of a common cold virus, called an adenovirus, engineered to carry two genes of the Ebola virus.
Animal testing has shown that when the adenovirus infects cells the Ebola genes produce harmless proteins that stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies to Ebola.
GSK acquired the vaccine after buying Swiss-based biotech company Okairos for 250 million euros ($319 million) last year.
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Global Health and Development Beat
Continued rains in Gurgaon, India ensure that cases of malaria and dengue will continue to increase, says The Times of India.
The UK development agency, DFID, is seeking to strengthen coordination between different health service providers in Bangladesh to protect the poorest from unacceptable healthcare expenses.
The true death toll from the Ebola epidemic is being masked by chaotic data collection and people’s reluctance to admit that their loved ones had the virus, according to one of West Africa’s most celebrated film-makers.
An Australian maker of blood-plasma therapeutics, says it is exploring whether it can develop a plasma product to treat Ebola, at the request of the Gates Foundation.
Canada will start sending more than 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to Switzerland this week as part of the global fight against the deadly virus, a Geneva hospital said.
Oxfam is appealing to European Union foreign ministers to do more to fight Ebola; a disease Oxfam said could be the “definitive humanitarian disaster of our generation.”
France’s foreign minister said Sunday a call by unions representing Air France cabin staff to suspend flights to Ebola-hit Guinea would encourage riskier forms of travel that could spread the virus even faster.
After criticism of a poor response to the Ebola crisis, the United Nations is establishing a management hub in Ghana. The head of UNMEER says the agency is in a race against the disease.
Spain has agreed to allow the US to use two military bases in the southwest of the country to support its efforts to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Economist Paul Collier reviews Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s new book, ‘A Pat Appears,’ in the New York Times. An excerpt:
“A Path Appears” aims to reconnect us through the myriad opportunities to make a difference provided by the new wave of social enterprise. Sainthood is not required. Managers at the French yogurt company Danone are making a difference simply by redirecting core expertise to Bangladesh, developing a healthy and affordable product. At the same time, you can piggyback on the sainthood of others. The physician Gary Slutkin learned the principles of disease control from a decade of working in Africa, including in cholera-ravaged refugee camps; when he returned home to Chicago, he applied his knowledge of public health to curbing the spread of gang violence. He decided to treat violence as an infectious disease, hiring “violence interrupters” to stop the epidemic from spreading. The Justice Department found that Slutkin’s organization, Cure Violence, reduced shootings by as much as 28 percent in some areas. Slutkin estimates a dollar spent on his programs saves $15.77 in medical and legal costs alone.
Our own lives in the developed world are of unprecedented affluence, and they are juxtaposed against crushingly hopeless mass misery. But many families are only a generation or two on from the experience of despair. I am a professor, but my parents were both manual workers who left school at 12 and were trapped by the Depression. They never had a chance. I recognized that same lack of opportunity across Africa, and it’s what has motivated my work.
Irrespective of whether helping governments to improve their policies has benefited the recipients, it has certainly given me the satisfaction of a meaningful life. But as Kristof and WuDunn show, if you really want to get the oxytocin flowing, the most effective help is person-to-person. A little late in our lives, my wife and I adopted two toddlers from a distressed relative. Our British friends thought we were crazy, while our African friends thought we were normal. Our African friends were right. It is the single most rewarding thing we have ever done. And yes, kindness is normal: Last year, when our little Alex heard about the typhoon that hit the Philippines, he took his money box to school and upended it. I doubt this did much for Filipinos, but his act radiated through our family. Kristof and WuDunn highlight another child’s kindness, which was escalated by tragic circumstances. For her ninth birthday, in lieu of presents, Rachel Beckwith chose donations for an organization called charity:water. She was sorry to miss her target of $300. Six weeks later she was critically injured in a car accident. In a desperate effort to show solidarity with the family, friends revived her campaign. It went viral, raising $1.2 million and providing clean water for 37,000 people in Ethiopia. Rachel did not survive, but in her short life she made a real difference.
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Capital Events
Monday
12:00 PM – Who Will Solve the Ebola Crisis? – Aspen Institute
7:00 PM – A Conversation with Susan Markham, Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, USAID – Delta Phi Epsilon
Tuesday
5:00 PM – Why Nations Fail – Elliott School of International Affairs
Wednesday
12:00 PM – Caring for an Aging Population: US-Japan Comparative Research into the Potential of Prevention-Based Approach – East-West Center
6:00 PM – Awkward Engagement: Reflections on Doctors Without Borders’ Work in North Korea – SAIS
Thursday
8:00 AM – Launching A Road-map for the Base of the Pyramid Domain: Re-energizing for the Next Decade – SID
10:00 AM – World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century – Wilson Center
Friday
12:00 PM – Beyond Great Places to Work: The Business Case for Investing in Front-Line Workers – Aspen Institute
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
