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(FREETOWN, Sierra Leone) — The fight against the Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Tuesday it would begin testing an Ebola vaccine in Sierra Leone.
About 6,000 health and frontline workers will receive the vaccine in five different districts around the nation. The study is intended to look at the “safety and efficacy” of a candidate vaccine.
“A safe and effective vaccine would be a very important tool to stop Ebola in the future, and the frontline workers who are volunteering to participate are making a decision that could benefit health care professionals and communities wherever Ebola is a risk,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement. “We hope this vaccine will be proven effective, but in the meantime we must continue doing everything necessary to stop this epidemic — find every case, isolate and treat, safely and respectfully bury the dead, and find every single contact.”
Participants in the study will receive the vaccine and be followed for six months to track how well it protects workers from the Ebola virus.
Because transmission of Ebola has slowed significantly, it’s not clear how well the study will be able to determine the efficacy of the proposed vaccine.
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