WHO eyes mass Ebola vaccines by mid-2015

GENEVA: Hundreds of thousands of Ebola vaccine doses could be rolled out to west Africa by mid-2015, the World Health Organization said Friday, after new cases of the virus were reported in New York and a two-year-old girl died in the first case in Mali.

Two American nurses were declared cured of Ebola and one -- Dallas-based Nina Pham -- hugged President Barack Obama at the White House to prove it.

But Europe´s main stock markets fell over concerns about New York´s first case, in a doctor who tested positive after returning from treating sufferers in Guinea, one of the countries at the epicentre of the world´s worst outbreak of the disease.

The search for an effective vaccine to fight the disease took on fresh urgency, as the WHO said several hundred thousand doses could be available in the "first half" of 2015.

"All is being put in place to start efficacy tests in the affected countries as early as December," WHO assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny said.

Kieny´s comments came after closed-door talks to try to find a vaccine to beat a disease that has killed almost 4,900 people and ravaged the west African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"A vaccine is not the magic bullet, but when ready, it may be a good part of the effort to turn the tide of the epidemic," Kieny said.