Canada to donate untested Ebola vaccine to help battle disease in Africa

Canada is to donate an experimental Ebola vaccine to be used to fight the disease in Africa.

The move comes after the World Health Organization decided it was ethical in the circumstances to offer untested drugs to people infected by the virus.

The Canadian government has only around 1,500 doses of the vaccine, which it invented a few years ago. It has been effective in animals but has never been tested on humans.

The Ebola outbreak is the world’s largest and deadliest. More than 1000 people have died, the majority of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

On Tuesday the first European died of Ebola. Spanish priest Miguel Pajares was working at a Catholic hospital in the Liberian capital when he contracted the virus.

The 75-year-old was airlifted back to Spain last week. He had been treated with the US experimental drug, Zmapp but died in hospital in Madrid