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Congo minister's resignation could unblock new Ebola vaccine

───   11:20 Tue, 23 Jul 2019

Congo minister's resignation could unblock new Ebola vaccine | News Article

Congo's health minister resigned on Monday after being stripped of the responsibility to manage the country's Ebola outbreak, potentially paving the way for the introduction of a second vaccine to contain the spreading epidemic.


Oly Ilunga has overseen Democratic Republic of Congo's near year-long response to what is the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. It has killed more than 1,700 and been declared an international health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO).

President Felix Tshisekedi on Saturday appointed a team led by Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the head of Congo's biomedical research institute, to coordinate the government's response in Ilunga's place.

In his resignation letter, the minister criticised pressure by unnamed "actors" to deploy the second vaccine, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson and backed by the WHO.

It has yet to be used on the ground due to Ilunga's objections. It is designed to complement a Merck treatment that has been given to 170,000 people and proved effective.

J&J says the vaccine has been tested on more than 6,000 volunteers and raised no particular safety concerns.

Its chief scientific officer, Paul Stoffels, said in a telephone interview that the company had been "very transparent, very open and in full communication" with Congolese authorities.

He said J&J had discussed with Muyembe how people could be vaccinated around eastern Congo's biggest city, Goma, where a first Ebola case was confirmed last week, to create a protective "curtain".

The WHO and other international donors including medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres have publicly supported using the second vaccine, of which 1.5 million doses are available.

A WHO spokesman said the organisation was grateful for Ilunga's leadership and dedication and looked forward to "working closely with the new coordination team as we have with the previous one".


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