Ebola trial vaccine volunteers to be monitored

The co-investigator of the recent Ebola trial vaccine, Dr. Steven Kennedy, has said volunteers who took the vaccine trial will be monitored for life safety, adding there is a need to keep track of them into their various communities to ensure that they don’t experience any kind of problem.

Dr. Kennedy said though the recent Ebola vaccine trial has nothing to do with volunteers getting Ebola, but it has some side effects such as severe headache and weakness, among others.

According to him, those side effects come about when the individual has weak resistance.

Addressing reporters Thursday, May 14, 2015, at his office on 12th Street, Sinkor Dr. Kennedy said in phase two of the trial vaccine, 600 persons were targeted initially, but later on the number increased to 1,500.

He added that the entire study for phase two ended with 549 persons participating in the process, 16% of them females.

According to Dr. Kennedy, phase three of the vaccine study will not be done in Liberia, because it will focus on large population in an affected country probably Guinea.

He said stressed the need for governments and international partners to establish vaccine sites in the three most affected countries, to provide adequate response to future disease outbreak.

He noted that the deadly Ebola outbreak in Liberia posed serious challenge to the country’s health care system, and left nurses, and doctors with limited knowledge on how to handle the virus, which caused many innocent lives.

Dr. Kennedy called on the Government of Liberia to get ready for any disease that will come into the country, saying, “It is time that officials, and decision makers think about putting in a new strategy that will prevent this country from any harmful disease.”-Edited by Jonathan Brown