Goma (DR Congo) (AFP)

A second vaccine was introduced on Thursday against the outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a few days after the official approval of the first serum.

Teams from the Médecins sans Frontière (MSF) NGO have opened two dose injection centers at Johnson & Johnson (J & J) in Goma, the largest city in North Kivu with one to two million inhabitants, on the border of Rwanda.

In the district of Majengo, two people were vaccinated and 41 had removed a ticket on the waiting list in the middle of the morning, told AFP an MSF spokesman.

In charge of implementing the new protocol, MSF wants to target "50,000 people over a four-month period", with 23,000 doses already delivered in the DRC, according to NGO figures.

"After receiving the first dose of the vaccine, participants will be asked to come back two months later for a second injection," MSF said in a statement.

The challenge is to "verify the success of the two-dose vaccination in a region with a highly mobile population and where there have been cases in the past".

The first four cases of haemorrhagic fever were recorded in Goma in July-August. Health officials feared the spread of the disease in a densely populated city, a hub of trade with Rwanda, Uganda, and the neighboring province of South Kivu.

- No cases in Goma -

However, no new cases of Ebola fever have been reported in Goma since August. The epicenter of the epidemic is still 350 km north, in the Beni-Butembo region, with risks of displacement to the neighboring province of Ituri.

Declared on August 1, 2018, this 10th epidemic of hemorrhagic fever on Congolese soil killed 2,193 people, for 1,067 cures. The epidemic was declared a "global public health emergency" on 17 July by WHO, in a call for donors.

Top contributors, the United States announced in July that they had "paid more than 98 million dollars to the DRC in response to the outbreak of Ebola."

This is the second most serious epidemic in history after West Africa in 2014 (11,000 deaths in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea).

It is also the first time that vaccines have been used on a "compassionate" basis (experimentally, without prior authorization of marketing) to prevent the disease which results in fever, diarrhea, haemorrhage. ..

In endemic areas, the first vaccination campaign began one week after the official declaration of the outbreak on August 1, 2018.

Since then, 251,079 people have been vaccinated by the first rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, manufactured by the US group Merck Shape and Dohme, according to the latest score of Congolese health authorities Wednesday night.

Chance of dates or not in the "war of vaccines", as some specialists call it? This first vaccine received a start of registration prior to its official launch on the market just before the introduction of the second protocol.

The WHO "prequalified" the first vaccine on Tuesday, "paving the way for its use in high-risk countries".

The WHO announcement follows the European Commission's decision on Monday to allow the commercialization of the vaccine. On 18 October, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had already given the green light.

In July, former Health Minister Oly Ilunga resigned by denouncing "actors who have demonstrated a manifest lack of ethics" in their willingness to introduce a second vaccine.

Oly Ilunga is currently under house arrest, accused by the Congolese authorities of embezzlement in the fight against the Ebola epidemic.

In September, MSF accused the WHO of "rationing" the first vaccine used since the beginning of the epidemic. Charges that the WHO had swept away.

A significant reduction in cases of Ebola contamination has been observed in recent weeks by health authorities. On Wednesday evening, the latest epidemiological bulletin indicates that 508 suspected cases are under investigation: "Four new cases have been confirmed and no new confirmed cases deaths have been recorded".

"In its current phase, the epidemic is no longer urban, but it has become a rural epidemic." The Ebola virus has entrenched itself in Ituri, so it must be continued, trapped and eliminated, "said End october Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, coordinator of the Ebola response.

© 2019 AFP