'Big Pharma' slammed for lack of Ebola drug

Red Cross workers in West Point, Liberia, quarantined to stop Ebola spreading. The number of actual cases may be two to four times higher than reported. Photo / AP

Scientist says major firms ‘saw no business case’ for investment.

The scientist leading Britain's response to the Ebola pandemic has launched an attack on "Big Pharma", accusing drugs giants including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Sanofi, Merck and Pfizer of failing to manufacture a vaccine, not because it was impossible but because there was "no business case".

West Africa's Ebola outbreak, which has now claimed at least 2100 lives, could have been "nipped in the bud" if a vaccine had been developed and stockpiled sooner, said Professor Adrian Hill of Oxford University.

A team led by Hill is to begin trials of an experimental Ebola vaccine fast-tracked in a desperate bid to slow the spread of the virus in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. If it passes safety and effectiveness trials, 10,000 doses of the vaccine - co-developed by Britain's GSK and America's National Institutes of Health (NIH) - could be used to protect health workers in West Africa by December.

However, Hill said the fact a vaccine had not been available to stop the disease when it emerged in Guinea six months ago represented a "market failure" of the commercial system of vaccine production dominated by the pharmaceutical giants.

The scale of the Ebola outbreak and the devastation it is causing has led the World Health Organisation (WHO) to order an unprecedented acceleration of drug development processes, but new treatments aren't expected before the end of the year.

Experts are looking at 10 unlicensed and experimental Ebola therapy and vaccine candidates, of which the GSK/NIH vaccine is among the most promising. Already the experimental drug ZMapp, developed by Mapp, a small US biopharmaceutical firm, has been used to treat at least seven patients - four of them Westerners - and has shown promising results in trials on primates. Stocks have now run out, but the US Government has given Mapp US$25 million ($30 million) to scale up production.

As well as the GSK/NIH vaccine, to be tested in healthy volunteers in Oxford within two weeks, a promising Canadian vaccine is being tested in the US.

Hill explained the GSK/NIH vaccine, based on a strain of chimpanzee cold virus and known as ChAd3, was originally developed in the US for potential use against a bio-terror attack and only existed because of high levels of funding allocated to vaccines designated for defence.

Watch: Videographic: Ebola

"Commercial vaccine supply is monopolised by four or five mega-companies ... Unless there's a big market, it's not worth the while of a mega-company. There was no business case to make an Ebola vaccine for the people who needed it most.

First because of the nature of the outbreak; second, the number of people likely to be affected was, until now, thought to be very small; and third, the fact that the people affected are in some of the poorest countries in the world and can't afford to pay for a new vaccine ...

"If you invest in having a small amount of vaccine available ... as soon as anything happens you could save huge amounts of money, not to mention lives."

'Stay indoors' prescription

Sierra Leone has ordered the entire population to stay at home for three days as the authorities struggle to contain an Ebola outbreak. The Government has told all 5.8 million Sierra Leoneans to stay indoors from September 19 to 21 inclusive.

Soldiers and police will be deployed across the West African country to enforce this order, designed to halt the relentless spread of the disease.

"The aggressive approach is necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola once and for all," said Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, a presidential adviser on the country's Ebola task force, according to Reuters news agency. The worst-ever outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has claimed at least 2100 lives in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria. The number of recorded cases has risen to almost 4000 in the four countries.

- Independent, Telegraph Group Ltd