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Russia's Health Ministry Hopes Its Ebola Vaccine Will Be Ready by 2016

Russia was planning to begin testing an Ebola vaccine on primates this spring. Pixabay

Russia expects to put a vaccine against Ebola on the market in about a year, after completing trials and approval stages, a Health Ministry official has said.

Marina Shevyreva, the head of the ministry's department for health protection, said Sunday that final test results were expected by the end of this year and that the vaccine should be ready for "mass use" in early 2016, RIA Novosti reported.

Russia was planning to begin testing an Ebola vaccine on primates this spring, the Rospotrebnadzor health watchdog said last week, RIA Novosti reported at that time.

The Russian watchdog is one of many organizations in a global race to produce an effective vaccine for the virus, which the World Health Organization says has killed more than 8,500 people and infected a further 13,000, predominantly in Western Africa.

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