The Wellcome Trust and the University of Minnesota in the US launched a roadmap for fast tracking clinical trials for Ebola vaccines on 17 February.
The roadmap, which was compiled with the help of a panel of 26 experts in public health, medicine, bioethics, pharmaceutical companies and humanitarian relief, is a follow up to an interim document published in January.
It encourages the continuation of phase two and three trials even though “definitive data on vaccine efficacy cannot be guaranteed”.
The significant fall in new cases has seen funders like the Wellcome Trust and the biopharmaceutical company Chimerix put trials on hold due to difficulties in gathering enough trial participants.
But African policymakers should lead the ethical decisions that affect the well being of their populations in areas affected by the outbreak, the document recommends.
The roadmap also recommends that vaccines should be stockpiled for future outbreaks once the current one has been controlled.
“This framework, designed to guide global preparations and focusing on what needs to be done now for this epidemic and put into place in the period between future epidemics, will prove critical in minimising the chances of the world finding itself in a position again when we do not have treatments and vaccines for these predictable and often devastating diseases,” said Jeremy Farrar, Wellcome Trust director and co-chair of the panel that drafted the roadmap, in a statement.