By Daniel Itai.
(News of The South) – The Congolese medical authorities have received the first shipment of a new Ebola vaccine as the central African country battles its second deadliest outbreak of the virus this decade.
The health ministry for the eastern province of North Kivu said that a preliminary batch of 11 000 doses of the new Ad26-ZEBOV-GP vaccine manufactured by Johnson & Johnson had arrived on Friday.
In all, a shipment of a total 50 000 doses is being sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to help fight an outbreak that has killed more than 2 100 people since August 2018.
Until now, the only vaccine against the disease was one manufactured by US firm, Merck Sharpe and Dohme.
The DRC’s deadliest Ebola outbreak since the West Africa pandemic in the 2014-2016 period has affected the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri and has left 2 183 people dead, according to the latest official figures.
Since the start of the vaccination campaign on August 8 2018, a total number of 245 999 people have since been vaccinated.
Ebola fighters have been hindered by chronic insecurity in the affected provinces of eastern DRC, but much of the controversy surrounding the response has been centred on the use of vaccines.
The World Health Organisation had been pushing Kinshasa for months to approve the use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, an experimental product to protect those living outside of direct transmission zones.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been rejected by DRC’s former health minister Oly Ilunga, who cited the risks of introducing a new product in communities where mistrust of Ebola responders is already high, but Ilunga’s resignation in July appeared to have paved the way for the second vaccine.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the new head of the anti-Ebola campaign, said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would be used from mid-November with the operation being launched simultaneously in DRC and Rwanda.
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