Volunteer gets ebola vaccine

A healthy Briton yesterday became the first volunteer to receive a potentially life-saving new vaccine to tackle the ebola virus spreading through West Africa.

Ruth Atkins, a communications manager in the NHS from Marcham in Oxfordshire, was injected with the experimental drug as part of a safety trial carried out by experts at the University of Oxford.

She is one of 60 volunteers who are taking part in the UK trial over the coming weeks which has been fast tracked because of the worsening outbreak.

The trial is being led by the university’s Professor Adrian Hill who hailed it as a “very important step”.