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Ebola vaccine gives 100% protection: Researcher

A vial of the VSV-ZEBOV vaccine (File photo)

An Ebola vaccine has proven to provide complete protection against the baneful disease in a field trial in the hard-hit Guinea, a researcher has claimed.

The trial showed that the vaccine "offers 100 percent protection against Ebola after roughly one week," said researcher Sven Trelle from the Swiss University of Bern.

The world is "on the verge of an effective Ebola vaccine," the World Health Organization (WHO) said, hailing the results from the first efficacy test of the VSV-ZEBOV vaccine.

The test, backed by drug firm Merck, the WHO and the governments of Canada, Norway and Guinea, saw 4,123 high-risk people vaccinated immediately after someone close to them fell ill with the deadly fever. None of the vaccinated groups caught the virus, according to study results published in The Lancet medical journal.

Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever, whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding. The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces, or sweat. It can also be spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

Medical staff clean their protection suits as part of the fight against the Ebola virus at the Donka hospital in the Guinean capital Conakry on March 8, 2015 (AFP photo).

About 28,000 people have been infected in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in the worst Ebola outbreak in history, according to the WHO, and more than 11,000 have died.


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