Accra: Ghana has halted a plan to test two Ebola vaccines in an eastern town after legislators backed local protests against the trials sparked by fears of contamination, officials said on Wednesday.
The country`s Food and Drugs Authority said it had begun enlisting volunteers in Hohoe in the Volta region to be injected with drugs made by Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic as part of a global Ebola vaccine drive.
Youth leaders threatened to boycott the programme. "We don`t want to be guinea pigs," one local leader told Reuters.
Ebola has killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since it began more than a year ago but new cases have declined sharply. Ghana has yet to record a case.
"The (health) minister has suspended the trials indefinitely because the people said they don`t want it," Health Ministry spokesman Tony Goodman said. The worst-hit countries have completed first trials of an experimental vaccine.
On Wednesday, parliament ordered the trials suspended and summoned the health minister to appear next week on the matter,
