Spain to test new Ebola vaccine in September

Doctors at Spain's Carlos III Hospital in Madrid will test a new vaccine against the Ebola virus from September, Jose Armos Arribas, the Head of the Infection Disease Unit at the hospital confirmed Thursday.

The news comes exactly a year after the Carlos III Hospital was used to treat three Spaniards infected by the virus: missionaries Miguel Pajares and Manuel Garcia Viejo, who contracted the illness in West Africa and nursing auxiliary Teresa Romero, who was infected while treating Garcia Viejo in Madrid.

While Romero recovered from the virus, the missionaries, who were flown to Spain in a serious condition, died.

The new vaccine VSV-ZEBOV has been developed by the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders and has already been tested successfully on over 4,000 people in Guinea.

Arribas said the aim of the trails in Spain was to "know more details of the security and the production" of the vaccine, which is based on a virus of non-human origin genetically adapted to stimulate the human organism to produce anti-bodies to the Ebola virus.

Carlos III is also carrying out tests on the serum from a recovered Ebola patient which was used to cure Romero given that the nursing auxiliary received several treatments. It is still uncertain which of those allowed her to overcome the illness.