New Delhi, Sept. 10 -- CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) CEO, Richard Hatchett, is in India for CEPI's board meeting, its first in the country. In an exclusive interaction with HT, Hatchett spoke about the chances of getting a vaccine ready for field trials for the Bundibugyo virus in next four to six weeks, with India contributing significantly in manufacturing of one of the front-runners. Edited excerpts: We are having the first meeting of our board in India. We planned to have a board meeting in India in 2020, but then Covid happened. India was one of our original funder countries. This outbreak, unfortunately, has spread dramatically. Africa CDC has said that the area where the current outbreak is occurring is about the size of United Kingdom. Our experience with Ebola over the past decade has demonstrated that it is actually a family of viruses that have the potential to have a large, explosive outbreaks. And the surprising thing about this outbreak is the virus, Bundibugyo, which was known to have caused only two outbreaks previously. People knew it was circulating in the area but they didn't appreciate that it had the explosive potential that it had.We don't have a vaccine yet. CEPI's core competency as an organisation is supporting research and development of vaccine. There are some therapeutics that are being evaluated- monoclonal antibodies, and small molecule therapeutics, remdesivir and obeldesivir. We are providing some monitory support for the evaluation of the therapeutics, but our main investments are in supporting the development of the matched vaccines against this specific Bundibugyo Ebola Virus. CEPI is supporting five different candidates that actually represent four different approaches. In fact, India has a stake in the vaccine that's likely to be the first vaccine to be evaluated in DRC- the Oxford vaccine that's being manufactured in Serum Institute of India. Serum's ability to receive the starting materials, and scale up the production very quickly is best in the world. We are hoping that the Oxford and Moderna vaccines will be ready for field evaluation- testing in DRC- in the next four to six weeks. It's possible that we could get a result, at least an initial indication, in a couple of months. But that's if everything goes as planned. We hope, by the end of the year we know whether these vaccines work or not. India has tremendous vaccine development and production capability. The country has been one of the global leaders in thinking about pandemic preparedness and response. It has tremendous production capacity and increasingly strong development capability. India has the tremendous opportunity to contribute to general pandemic preparedness and response....