“The Ebola Vaccine We Needed”
About 27,000 people in West Africa have been infected with the Ebola
virus and more than 11,000 of them have died since the outbreak began
last year. Many could have been saved if an effective vaccine had been
available. But the world relies on drug companies to create new vaccines
and medications, and they have no financial incentive to do so for diseases
that mostly affect poor countries. Clearly, the world needs a better
mechanism for vaccine development.
It was only after the Ebola outbreak last year — and public alarm in the
United States and Europe following the infection of a few Western health
workers and visitors to West Africa — that scientists were spurred to
develop potential vaccines that had been in the works for years. Trials in
Guinea indicate one new vaccine is highly effective. While this is good
news, it comes too late for thousands of Ebola’s victims.
Beyond Ebola, there are other diseases that could spark deadly
epidemics. The MERS virus already caused an outbreak in South Korea this
year. Another deadly respiratory disease, SARS; Chikungunya; and West
Nile virus are also of concern.
Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine published a bold
proposal by three doctors for an international vaccine fund with an initial
capitalization of $2 billion. That is far less than the $8 billion that Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea, which had the most Ebola cases, say they need
for recovery. Bringing a single new vaccine to market costs between $500
million and $1 billion.
The fund would be a boon to the biotechnology companies and
university research centers that are already working on vaccines but don’t
have the resources to get drugs approved and manufactured. And it would
save lives. The World Health Organization, which sponsored the trials of
the Ebola vaccine in Guinea, could act as an umbrella organization for the
fund, with financing contributed by drug companies and private
foundations, as it was for the new Ebola vaccine. The W.H.O. should set up
the new fund immediately and urge its member states to contribute
generously. The time to act is now — before a new epidemic takes off.