Dr. Frank Plummer, scientific director at Winnipeg's National Microbiology Lab, said the vaccine will likely become the standard defence for scientists involved in lab accidents with Ebola. He said it also may be the tool scientists eventually use to control outbreaks of the hemorrhagic fever.

The experimental vaccine was recently sent to Hamburg, Germany from Winnipeg, after a research scientist accidentally pricked herself with Ebola virus while working in the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine.

There is no cure or vaccine for Ebola, and between 50 and 90 per cent of people who contract the virus die. The virus can cause a hemorrhagic fever, which is spread through direct contact with an infected person's blood or through sexual contact.