Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much funding from her Department has been assigned to Ebola vaccine candidate and safety testing; how much of that funding has been spent in (a) 2014 and (b) 2015 to date; and what steps she is taking to ensure that vaccine candidates funded by her Department are safe for use by pregnant women and nursing mothers.

Alongside the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, DFID has assigned up to £2m for Phase 1 trials of the GlaxoSmithKline Ebola vaccine candidate. There have been no disbursements of funding to date.

The GSK vaccine has now been tested on healthy people without any significant side effects. Additional data will come from phase 2 and 3 trials. In line with standard practice for vaccine trials, the protocols exclude pregnant and breastfeeding women. This group would therefore not be included in any initial rollout.