MONROVIA, August 28 (LINA) -A trial vaccine against Ebola could be given to healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom in September, according to an international health consortium.

The trial will start as soon as ethical approval is granted, experts at the Wellcome Trust say.
If the vaccine works well the study will extend to The Gambia and Mali, according to the BBC.

The World Health Organization says the virus could affect 20,000 people during this outbreak which is expected to continue for many months.

The latest figures show more than 1,550 people have died from the virus, with more than 3,000 confirmed cases - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The vaccine study is planned to run alongside similar trials in the United States.
Scientists will use a single Ebola virus protein to stimulate an immune response - but they say it cannot cause someone who is given it to become infected.

It is hoped the medicine will prevent people from catching the disease.
In the first part of the trial it will be given to 60 healthy volunteers and if shown to be safe and working well it will then be administered to 80 volunteers in The Gambia and Mali.
Experts say it is hoped the first phase of the trial will be completed by the end of 2014 and that the medicine can then be fast-tracked to wider populations.

"Developing a new vaccine is complex with no guarantees of success and it's still early days for our Ebola vaccine candidate,” said Dr Moncef Slaoui of GlaxoSmithKline, the company working on the vaccine.
LINA PTK