Monrovia – The Principal Investigator of Partnership for Research on Ebola Virus in Liberia (PREVAIL) Dr. Mosoka Fallah says Protecting the population for the next disease remain a priority of PREVAIL.
Report by Bettie K. Johnson Mbayo, [email protected]
He spoke at a one-day national consultative stakeholders meeting on Ebola Natural History Study (ENHS).
Fallah said for the past months PREVAIL has been thinking on how to make the vaccine available to mitigate any unsuspected outbreak.
He recalled the Democratic Republic of Congo has had 8 outbreaks and is discussing on how to employ the vaccine.
“So we are working on a team to now make the vaccine a public health response, so if you are an Ebola contact, you can be protected. “
Fallah continued: “Ebola can come back but we are prepared that if it returns we as a country will be ready, we are using the information from PREVAIL- One is to have the vaccine available so that it can be rapidly deployed.”
He disclosed that PREVAIL was asked to build the capacity of Liberians so that when the vaccine is approved, Liberia should be one of the sector in case there is another outbreak Liberians will be protected.
“We tested over 150 women and we haven’t seen issue of RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) and we did a report that we have strong evidence that it is not found in the woman survivor womb, we also did the breast milk for 700 samples and it wasn’t there also. We didn’t see any virus in the lady but what we saw that all the babies born have the protection from their mom.”
The head of social mobilization, communication &Communication and community engagement Lead Manager at PREVAIL Barthalomew Wilson commended the participants for attending.
“For every time we come here we want to say thank you, you asked us to inform you how the research is going and this is what we are doing and this is why we are here.”
He continued: “You are important to PREVAIL, and we ask you to leave and go carry the message, PREVAIL depends on you to tell the people what you have learned, we can’t reach everywhere so we are depending on you to carry the message.”
Meanwhile, Advocacy lead Joseph Boye Cooper said 414 participants specifically 325 adults and 84 Children participated in PREVAIL 5 vaccine Study.
He said “Liberia has long been receiving the therapeutic drugs from other the western countries, it is time we contribute to public health initiatives”.
Cooper added that PREVAIL is looking forward to more scientific studies that will positively impact the public health village of the world.
The study is to know how long the vaccine can stay in the body to fight Ebola and to know how well the vaccine can work in children.
PREAVAIL 5 vaccine recruitment is for one year and study participants will be followed for an additional four years.