Sierra Leone begins Ebola vaccination a decade after deadly outbreak

Authorities in Sierra Leone on Thursday started a nationwide rollout of the single-dose Ebola vaccine, the first such campaign in West Africa where a deadly outbreak 10 years ago resulted in the death of thousands.

The 2014 Ebola outbreak – the deadliest in history – was primarily in West Africa but affected Sierra Leone the most, with nearly 4,000 deaths out of the more than 11,000 recorded globally. The country also lost 7% of its healthcare workforce to the outbreak.

Cynthia Reffell, a health worker in the country, said that the people who are most exposed to the disease will be the first to benefit from the vaccination campaign.

“We are targeting healthcare workers and front-line workers like the police, military officers and traditional healers," she said.

"We are dealing with the Ebola vaccine on the preventive side because if one person is affected every other person will be affected."

The nationwide vaccine campaign, implemented by the government in partnership with the global vaccine alliance Gavi, the World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency, will target 20,000 frontline workers across the country, officials said.

To ensure the campaign's success, authorities and health officials have called on the country's traditional healers to get communities on board.

“As they have informed us about the vaccine, it is our responsibility as stakeholders, as well as traditional healers, to encourage the communities and traditional healers, to take the vaccines which are not harmful”, said Darlington Coker, a traditional healer.

There had been no approved vaccine at the time of the 2014 outbreak that recorded up to 28,000 cases, starting in Guinea before spreading across land borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia, the other two countries affected the most.

Three years have passed since the last case was recorded in Guinea, although officials have spoken of remaining threats in endemic regions.