Opinion: How small vaccine stockpiles can stop outbreaks of infectious disease from becoming big
If we can’t get this right for known diseases like Marburg, what hope do we have for unknown pandemic threats?
Marburg could soon become the second virus in the past year to have experimental vaccine candidates ready for testing under an emergency use listing. Until this point, no licensed vaccines or treatments are available for Marburg. That was also the case with the Sudan strain of Ebola, which caused an outbreak in Uganda with 164 cases and more than 55 deaths in the last quarter of 2022. In that instance, vaccines were shipped in a record 78 days, but the outbreak was brought under control before they could be tested for efficacy and made available.
Currently, Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania are experiencing their very first Marburg outbreaks, and non-pharmaceutical control measures have so far struggled to contain this deadly hemorrhagic filovirus with a mortality rate of more than 50%. In Equatorial Guinea, Marburg has now spread from rural regions to the heavily populated port city of Bata. With the whole region on high alert, a safe and effective vaccine really couldn’t come soon enough.
What's Your Reaction?
