Sierra Leone on Thursday started injecting the first of thousands of frontline workers with a preventive Ebola vaccine, a decade after the disease ravaged parts of West Africa killing more than 11,000 people.
Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia were the worst-affected countries 10 years ago, in what was the largest Ebola outbreak since the virus was first discovered in 1976.
Sierra Leone is the first of the three countries to launch a national Ebola vaccination campaign, which will target 20,000 frontline workers.
Healthcare professionals and those most at risk of being exposed to the disease — such as first responders, traditional healers, religious leaders and security forces — will receive a single dose of the Ervebo vaccine.
The process got off to a slow start in some health centres and police stations in the capital Freetown, an AFP journalist saw.
“The Ebola vaccine is very good for us health workers”, said 40-year-old Josephine Abdulai after receiving her shot at a maternity hospital in the east of Freetown.
She said she lost five family members to the disease in 2014.
“If this vaccine was available at the time their lives could have been saved,” she added.
The national rollout will take place across all of Sierra Leone’s 16 districts, implemented by the health ministry in partnership with the Gavi vaccine alliance, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF, a joint statement said.
The Ebola outbreak which lasted from 2014 to 2016 killed around 4,000 people in Sierra Leone, including nearly seven percent of the healthcare workforce.
– Trauma still fresh –
“We are targeting at least 50 people a day at specific locations in Freetown”, said Foday Ambrose Marrah, the district operations officer for the health ministry in the Western Area Urban district.
He said some were hesitant to receive the vaccine.
“The trauma of the Ebola virus is still fresh on people’s minds”, he added.
Sierra Leone has not recorded an Ebola case since 2016, but an outbreak in neighbouring Guinea in 2021 prompted a localised vaccination drive in border districts.
Ebola is a rare but often fatal illness which can be transmitted through contact with infected animals or sick and deceased people.
Symptoms include a sudden fever, headache, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding.
The WHO puts the average case fatality rate at around 50 percent but says rates have been as high as 90 percent in past outbreaks.
As Ebola swept through Sierra Leone in 2014, there were no approved vaccines against the disease.
In 2019, the WHO prequalified the Ervebo vaccine and Gavi formally approved the establishment of a global stockpile of 500,000 doses.
Sierra Leone’s 20,000 doses come from the Gavi-funded stockpile.
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