Swiss to Test Ebola Vaccine on Volunteers Going to West Africa

Switzerland's drug regulator said on Tuesday (October 28) it had approved the testing of an experimental Ebola vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline on healthy volunteers, some of whom will be traveling to West Africa as medical staff.

The trial will be conducted among 120 volunteer participants at the Lausanne University Hospital, with support from the World Health Organization.

"This approval means that approximately 120 individuals in Lausanne will be used to trial these vaccines as volunteers. The trial is also ongoing in Mali, United Kingdom and United States. The vaccines is based on genetically modified chimpanzee adenovirus," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told a news briefing in Geneva.
Meanwhile, food prices have risen by an average of 24 percent across the three countries worst hit by the Ebola outbreak, the World Food Program (WFP) said on Friday, as aid workers scrambled to distribute emergency rations to the hungry.

The food-producing regions of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa have been severely affected by the worst outbreak on record of the viral haemorrhagic fever that has killed 4,546 across the three countries.

In the Liberian capital Monrovia, prices of cassava and imported rice, the main staple food, have jumped by 30 percent.