Geneva (AFP)

The DRC will use a second vaccine against Ebola in mid-October, announced Monday the World Health Organization (WHO), accused by the NGO Doctors Without Borders of "rationing" the vaccine Merck laboratories, the the only one used to date against the epidemic that has already killed more than 2,100 people.

"The DRC authorities, in deciding to deploy the second experimental vaccine (...) have once again demonstrated leadership and determination," said the director of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a statement.

WHO has specified that this second experimental vaccine, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson and requiring two doses of 56 days apart, will be administered to targeted at-risk populations in areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo where it is there is no active transmission of the Ebola virus.

In July, WHO raised the Ebola threat in the DRC to a "public health emergency of international concern". The epidemic reported in August 2018 is the second worst in history, with more than 2,100 deaths, behind the one that killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016.

Much criticized, especially by MSF, during the epidemic in West Africa for the slowness of its response and for not having measured the extent of the crisis before it exploded, WHO has since undertook a profound reform of its functioning.

But as the fight against the spread of the current Ebola epidemic in the DRC is hampered by conflict in the east of the country, as well as by attacks on medical teams, WHO is again under fire. MSF critics. The NGO accuses this time the UN specialized agency of "rationing" the vaccine Merck laboratories, while noting that "the reasons behind these restrictions remain unclear".

"Too few people at risk are protected today," the NGO, whose accusations are rejected by WHO, said in a statement.

In July, MSF President Joanne Liu called on WHO to vaccinate whole villages of infected people, instead of only vaccinating patient contacts and contact contacts according to the so-called "ring vaccination" strategy. in a belt ".

The NGO also sweeps the argument of a supply crisis: "Merck has just declared that in addition to the 245,000 doses already delivered to the WHO, they were ready to send 190,000 other doses if necessary, and that another 650,000 would be made available in the next six to 18 months ".

- An international committee? -

Denouncing the "opacity" of WHO, MSF now calls for "the creation of an independent international coordinating committee", integrating WHO, MSF, the Red Cross and UNICEF, to ensure in particular "transparency on inventory management "of vaccines.

Asked by AFP, the WHO denied any limitation of access to the vaccine, which was administered to more than 223,000 individuals.

"We are not limiting access to the vaccine, but rather putting in place a strategy recommended by a committee of independent experts, as agreed with the DRC government," said Dr. Mike Ryan, director of emergency programs. WHO.

In May, the same group of WHO experts recommended the introduction of a second vaccine. The Belgian laboratory Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of the American Johnson & Johnson, told the press that it was ready to send doses of the vaccine in very large quantities.

But the then Congolese Minister of Health, Dr. Oly Ilunga, was opposed to it. Ilunga, who resigned on July 22, denouncing attempts to introduce a second vaccine "by actors who have demonstrated a manifest lack of ethics," has since been indicted on 17 September for alleged "misappropriation" of funds allocated to the fight against Ebola.

"We welcome the introduction of a second vaccine," MSF immunization project manager John Johnson told AFP.

© 2019 AFP