According to reports, the U.K -based pharmaceuticals company may have found a product that is now ready to test on healthy human beings. The research team is looking for 120 volunteers for the test program and reports indicate that more than 50 have already volunteered.
While reports indicate that a majority of the volunteers are mainly doctors and medical students, the fact that some people are willing to become test subjects in what could possibly emerge to be a death ticket shows that at last, scientists could be making a major milestone towards fighting Ebola.
World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that, if kept unchecked, Ebola could strike as many as 10,000 people per week by December this year. However, according to Dr. Blaise Genton, a professor at the University Hospital of Lausanne, who has worked on more than 20 vaccine trials, there could be some progress towards finding a vaccine. He believes that the current string of vaccine to be tested is very different from the others, and expressed a great deal of optimism on the product.
"We need to go very fast so that we may have something more than what we have now in terms of preventive measures", Genton Said. A shipment of vials of the vaccine is expected to arrive today or tomorrow (Thursday), enabling inoculations to begin this week. Unconfirmed reports suggest that GlaxoSmithKline's experimental shot is based on a live version of a genetically modified chimpanzee virus that contains an Ebola gene.
Meanwhile, the volunteers from the broader community will receive $845 or 800 Swiss Francs as compensation for time spent and travel expenses.
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