WHO expects around 200,000 Ebola vaccine doses by mid-2015

GENEVA/LONDON - The World Health Organization (WHO) set out plans on Friday for speeding up development and deployment of experimental Ebola vaccines, saying hundreds of thousands of doses should be ready for use in West Africa by the middle of 2015.

The Geneva-based United Nations health agency confirmed that two leading vaccine candidates are already in human clinical trials, and said another five experimental vaccines were also being developed and would begin clinical trials next year.

"Before the end of first half of 2015..we could have available a few hundred thousand doses. That could be 200,000 - it could be less or could be more," the WHO's Marie-Paule Kieny told reporters after a meeting in Geneva of industry executives, global health experts, drug regulators and funders.

Researchers are already testing two candidate vaccines from GlaxoSmithKline and NewLink.