World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced the beginning of the first clinical trial of an Ebola vaccine in the outbreak that started in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a social media post on Friday that participants in the trial were vaccinated with the Ervebo vaccine in Bunia, the capital of the DRC’s northeastern Ituri province, which is the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak.

Ervebo, a vaccine approved for use against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola, will be put through a full-scale human trial to see if it offers any cross-protection against the Bundibugyo species of Ebola that is behind the epidemic.

“This trial will help us understand whether any of the vaccine candidates designed for Bundibugyo virus work,” the WHO chief said on X.

“WHO is supporting this DRC-led effort to find answers and save lives,” he added.

The DRC declared its 17th and worst-ever Ebola outbreak in May and has since reported more than 9,700 cases, with the number of deaths exceeding 4,600.

The WHO, in response, triggered a public health emergency of international concern, its second-highest alert level.

The current outbreak has now been reported in four countries across eastern, central ⁠⁠and western Africa, giving it the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent to date.

Vaccines in the pipeline

The so-called Tumaini trial is a single trial framework that can test the safety, efficacy and immunogenicity of multiple vaccines.

The trial will use a ring vaccination approach: immunising contacts deemed to be at high risk of infection.

The trial is set to incorporate two Bundibugyo-specific candidate vaccines, which are currently advancing through earlier-stage, smaller-scale clinical trials.

One is a ChAdOx1 adenoviral vector jab being developed by the University of Oxford; the other, by the US-based Moderna group, uses mRNA technology.

Both have received funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and are expected to enter the trial “shortly”, CEPI said in a statement.

The trial will include pregnant women and children aged 12 years and older, generating evidence for populations that are often excluded from clinical trials.

WHO emergencies director Chikwe Ihekweazu said the trial was set up to generate the rigorous evidence needed to determine whether the participating vaccines could protect people at risk.

Kenyan health authorities say latest patient was likely exposed to the country’s first Ebola case.

Kenyan health authorities say an eighth Ebola case has been detected, bringing the total number of known infections in the East African nation to eight.

Director-General for Health Patrick Amoth told Kenya’s Citizen TV that of the 38 people tested on Sunday, one had returned a positive result.

“He is a 49-year-old man who is not a healthcare worker. He developed fever, headache and muscle pain,” he said.

Amoth said the man, who worked as a patient attendant cleaning utensils and linens, was likely exposed to Kenya’s first Ebola case, discovered earlier this month.

He developed symptoms on Saturday, was quarantined and tested for the virus, a Ministry of Health source said.

The ministry reported four new cases on Saturday, three of whom were health workers who treated the country’s first Ebola patient, a man who travelled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to Nairobi and died at a Nairobi hospital on October 5.

In a post on X, the ministry said the fourth person was related to the deceased patient.

Kenya has been on heightened alert, as the Ebola outbreak has spilled across the border from the DRC. The current outbreak is of the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is no vaccine or specific treatment.

The DRC has recorded at least 9,400 cases, including more than 4,500 deaths, in the deadliest outbreak in the country’s history, which started in May.

Ituri province in eastern DRC remains the disease’s epicentre, accounting for almost three quarters of confirmed cases, according to the government’s most recent data. It announced on Sunday that the virus has reached an eighth province, North Ubangi.

State-run news agency ACP reported on Sunday that authorities in North Kivu province, where the World Health Organization said substantial transmission continues, are introducing a one-week ban from Monday on people entering the province from Ituri in an effort to slow the spread.

Other measures set to be introduced include restrictions on passenger numbers in cars and on motorbikes and suspension of large public gatherings.

Neighbouring Uganda recorded 20 confirmed cases, including 15 imported from the DRC, and two deaths, before it was declared Ebola-free in August.

Yemen has reported 8,034 suspected cases and 27 deaths this year, with a quarter of cases from the last four weeks.

Suspected cholera cases in Yemen have tripled in the past three weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned, as civilians have fled renewed fighting and sought safety in unsanitary camps.

Ramped up combat, which has pushed more than 200,000 people to flee their homes, the WHO added in a report on Tuesday, driving suspected cases from 217 in the week of September 6-12 to 647 in the week of September 27 to October 3.

“Families fleeing conflict are now facing another threat from diseases that can be prevented and treated,” said Annette Heinzelmann, the UN agency’s emergency director for the region.

“Without urgent funding and unimpeded access to safe water, vaccination and essential health services, outbreaks could spread rapidly among already vulnerable communities.”

This year, the global health watchdog said, Yemen had reported 8,034 suspected cases and 27 deaths, with a quarter of the suspected cases occurring in the last four weeks.

Five governorates hosting large numbers of displaced people in the southwest – Abyan, Lahij, al-Dhalea, Taiz and Aden – account for 92 percent of reported cases, they reported. The disease has also reached remote displacement camps in Hadramout in the country’s east that are particularly difficult for medical teams to access.

Emergency response underfunded

Cholera has ebbed and flowed for years as the conflict in Yemen has continued. In 2024, the WHO warned that the country was facing the “highest burden” of a global cholera outbreak. In 2017, a wave of the disease infected hundreds of thousands and killed at least 2,000.

Yemen was already suffering one of the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” and has seen an escalation of circumstances since fighting reignited between the Houthis – an armed group known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God), and the internationally recognised Yemeni government.

Cholera is an acute intestinal infection that spreads through food and water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, often from faeces. It causes severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps.

Contracting the illness can be deadly when not treated with oral rehydration or antibiotics for more severe cases.

The Geneva-based WHO said it had only secured $3.78m of the $31m needed for its 90-day emergency response in Yemen.

The funding is intended to help expand disease surveillance in displacement sites, deploy rapid response teams, strengthen cholera treatment and improve infection prevention in health facilities and cholera treatment sites.

A Russian agency links the lab worker’s death to ‘pneumonia of unknown’ origin.

An employee of a Russian anti-plague institute in the remote Siberian region of Irkutsk has reportedly died of a suspected pneumonic plague infection, according to a United States official.

“We are aware of reports of a fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. We are monitoring the situation closely with the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and our other interagency partners,” a State Department official told Al Jazeera

“Many details have not been confirmed. We encourage Russian authorities to share accurate information quickly and openly,” the official said.

Alexei Tsydenov, the governor of the Buryatia region, said in a post on his Telegram channel on October 3 that a woman in the neighbouring Irkutsk region had “died, maybe of the plague”.

Russia’s official TASS news agency reported on Sunday that the country’s consumer watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said in a statement that an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East had been diagnosed with “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”.

The watchdog also said it expanded testing of samples from the patient and found no microorganisms associated with her professional activities.

Pneumonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, usually found in small mammals and their fleas. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the plague is highly infectious and can be fatal if not treated early.

Local media named the woman who died as 28-year-old laboratory technician Darya Shipilova.

Media reports say that authorities in Siberia’s Irkutsk region have placed nearly 200 people under medical observation.