--- title: First Volunteer Receives Ebola Vaccine in UK Trial description: The volunteer is the first of 60 to participants in one of the first Ebola vaccine safety trials canonical: https://time.com/3393362/first-volunteer-receives-ebola-vaccine-in-u-k-trial/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-17T14:54:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:39.693Z article:section: Health og:title: First Volunteer Receives Ebola Vaccine in U.K. Trial og:description: The volunteer is the first of 60 to participants in one of the first Ebola vaccine safety trials og:url: https://time.com/3393362/first-volunteer-receives-ebola-vaccine-in-u-k-trial/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: First Volunteer Receives Ebola Vaccine in U.K. Trial twitter:description: The volunteer is the first of 60 to participants in one of the first Ebola vaccine safety trials twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # First Volunteer Receives Ebola Vaccine in U.K. Trial > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Why Do People Fear Ebola? [Watch (HLS stream): Why Do People Fear Ebola?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o73TUhFa.m3u8) (1:31)  _Published 2014-08-10. Jay Varkey, MD, Assistant Professor of Emory University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases on treating Ebola patients and the fear that goes with it._ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Sep 17, 2014 2:54 PM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Sep 17, 2014 2:54 PM UTC Ruth Atkins, 48, a communications and and engagement manager in the National Health Service in the U.K. is the first volunteer to be injected with an Ebola vaccine in a safety trial at the University of Oxford. The drug is in development by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The current Ebola outbreak has infected 4,963 people and killed 2,453 in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. One of the greatest concerns is that there are currently no vaccines or drugs to fight the disease, largely because researchers say pharmaceutical companies did not have a financial incentive to invest in them before the outbreak. MORE: [A Timeline of the Worst Ebola Outbreak in History](http://time.com/3386936/ebola-timeline/) Clinical trials in the U.S., Canada, and in the U.K. are underway on various drugs, the majority of which have never been tested on humans. Though the World Health Organization (WHO) has endorsed the use of experimental drugs during the outbreak, countries will want to know which drugs have the greatest probability of working. Atkins is the first participant out of 60 volunteers in Oxford’s trial. “I volunteered because the situation in West Africa is so tragic and I thought being part of this vaccination process was something small I could do to hopefully make a huge impact,” said Atkins in a statement. She heard about the trial while listening to one of the developers being interviewed on the radio. Safety trials with a small number of participants are needed to determine whether a vaccine is effective and safe enough to initiative larger efficacy trials in higher-risk populations. So far, Atkins has reported feeling fine. The drug uses a single Ebola virus protein to generate an immune response in the volunteer. There’s no infectious components involved, so an individual will not get infected with Ebola by participating. GSK is beginning to manufacture about 10,000 doses of the vaccine so that if safety trials are successful, the vaccine can be made immediately available to the WHO. ## Transcript So, why do people fear Ebola. It's new. Or at least it's recognized as being new here in the United States. It is a serious illness, but it's not a very contagious disease. This is not a particularly easy virus to transmit from one person to another. The whole notion of abating fear, when you talk about a disease that's reported to have. 50 to 60 to 90 % mortality rates. I would really caution on, something that we've been emphasizing for the last two weeks that that really needs to be taken with the recognition that those are mortality rates in healthcare environments that unfortunately do not have even close to the resources that we have here in the United States and other developed countries. The key to treatment for Ebola virus is supportive care. Supporting the patient long enough so that their immune system can develop the antibodies needed to really defeat this virus. We were sort of in a unique position of having this unit that was designed to take care of diseases far more contagious than the Ebola virus. But in this particular circumstance, it seemed like the right place to to care for these patients. My hope is, is that by providing excellent care here, that we learn process that can be translated and expanded so that, that, in my opinion, in a fair and just world, that those processes if they are really a key to improving survival. 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