Ebola emerged forty years ago. .. .Why still no vaccine?

Independent, UK - There is still no Ebola vaccine 40 years after the disease first emerged because it previously affected only poor African nations, the head of the World Health Organisation has said. Ads by Google

In unusually strident comments, Dr Margaret Chan, the director-general of the WHO, attacked drug companies and said that the reason clinicians were “empty-handed” was because “a profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay”.

She said that long-standing WHO complaints about the lack of investment in both vaccine development and the healthcare systems of poor states had “fallen on deaf ears for decades”. But the current global Ebola panic put the arguments “out there with consequences that all the world can see, every day, on prime time TV news”.

Speaking to the WHO’s regional committee for Africa in Benin, she said: “Ebola emerged nearly four decades ago. Why are clinicians still empty-handed, with no vaccines and no cure?"

She continued: “Because Ebola has historically been confined to poor African nations. The R&D incentive is virtually non-existent. A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay.”