For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Health Issues page and our Appetite For a Change page.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), millions of doses of Ebola vaccine should be ready and available next year. Efficacy trials for two different Ebola vaccines are slated to begin in December. As reported by The Verge:1

“The WHO says that there are no plans to begin a mass vaccination program until at least June 2015, and then only if the growth of the epidemic justifies it.”

The vaccine industry has a number of hurdles to conquer before they will stand to make a fortune from an Ebola vaccine however.

For starters, vaccine manufacturers are demanding indemnity against lawsuits that may arise from the use of a fast-tracked Ebola vaccine,2 similar to the indemnity claimed by the United Nations (UN), whose peacekeepers stand accused of causing the cholera outbreak in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake that devastated the small country.

An estimated 700,000 Haitians have contracted cholera and 8,500 have died from it since the beginning of the outbreak. While the source of the outbreak could not be conclusively determined, a group of Haitians filed a lawsuit against the UN in 2013.

A lawyer for the US Justice Department recently called for the case to be dismissed, saying the UN is “absolutely immune” to claims of wrongdoing.3 This is the kind of “immunity” vaccine makers want as well, but indemnity might not be quite as easy to get as initially thought in this case.