07:58 11/06/2015
Accra - Ghana has halted a plan to test two Ebola vaccines in an
eastern town after legislators backed local protests against the trials
sparked by fears of contamination, officials said on Wednesday.
The
country's Food and Drugs Authority said it had begun enlisting
volunteers in Hohoe in the Volta region to be injected with drugs made
by Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic as part of a global Ebola
vaccine drive.
Youth leaders threatened to boycott the programme. "We don't want to be guinea pigs," one local leader told Reuters.
Ebola
has killed more than 11 000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia
since it began more than a year ago but new cases have declined sharply.
Ghana has yet to record a case.
"The [health] minister has
suspended the trials indefinitely because the people said they don't
want it," Health Ministry spokesperson Tony Goodman said. The worst-hit
countries have completed first trials of an experimental vaccine.
On
Wednesday, parliament ordered the trials suspended and summoned the
health minister to appear next week on the matter, senior parliamentary
official Ebenezer Dzietror told Reuters.
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