From the article:
Pregnant and breastfeeding women will be given the experimental Ebola vaccine, marking a U-turn in World Health Organization (WHO) policy.
A meeting of the WHO's expert vaccine advisory group reversed a previous decision to deny pregnant women the vaccine because there was not enough evidence of its safety.
Pregnant women are usually excluded from all immunisation campaigns because vaccines against infectious diseases like Ebola are rarely tested or approved for use in pregnant women.
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Last year a report from an international group of experts called for pregnant women to be included in vaccine development and campaigns.
It said the exclusion of pregnant women from vaccine research and development was unacceptable and “business as usual simply cannot continue”.
Carleigh Krubiner, one of the authors of that report, welcomed WHO's policy reversal.
“This policy change will enable pregnant and lactating women to benefit from the protection the vaccine offers against Ebola infection, safeguarding their lives while also protecting their babies, families, and communities.
"It will also provide a critical opportunity to advance the evidence base on the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine so that decision makers in the future will be able to make informed decisions about how best to protect their populations, including pregnant women, in the event of an outbreak,” she said.
She added that pregnant women should no longer be left out of vaccine development strategies. "With global efforts now underway to develop a range of vaccines against devastating epidemic threats, we have to make sure pregnant women are on the agenda, so they will never again be left unprotected in the face of future outbreaks.”