China has approved a domestically developed Ebola vaccine, the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) said on October 19.

Chinese medical staffs help native African at a hospital in Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone. (Photo by Zhang Jianbo from People’s Daily)

The approval makes China the third country to develop a vaccine against Ebola after the US and Russia.

Compared with liquid vaccines produced by other counterparts, China’s vaccine is in the form of freeze-dried powder, which is more suitable for high-temperature areas in Africa because of better stability.

It is the first recombinant vaccine developed by China independently, and the country owns complete intellectual property rights over it.

The vaccine is able to activate both human cellular immunity and humoral immunity, ensuring safety and immunogenicity. The vaccine also marks a breakthrough from the technological bottleneck of lyophilized preparation of virus vector vaccines.

The vaccine was co-developed by the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in China and CanSino Biologics INC.

Ebola was first identified in 1976. The most serious outbreak of the disease, which hit West Africa in 2014, caused at least 11,300 deaths. The virus has been listed by the World Health Organization as one of the most deadly disease to humans.

A team of Chinese medical experts was sent to Africa to fight the disease on August 10, 2014, the same year of the outbreak.

Data shows that since the Ebola outbreak, China carried out its largest ever foreign health assistance since the founding of the country, sending more than 1,200 medical staff and public health experts to three affected African countries.