If all goes well, the vaccine could become available in 2018 under a fast-track approval process, it said.
In a major clinical trial, nearly 6,000 people in Guinea were given the test vaccine last year, at the tail end of a lethal epidemic of Ebola.
Not one of the 6,000 contracted the disease.
But in a control group of volunteers that did not receive the vaccine, 23 Ebola cases occurred, researchers reported in The Lancet medical journal.
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"After 40 years, we appear to now have an effective vaccine for Ebola virus disease to build upon," Thomas Geisbert, a scientist at Galveston National Laboratory in Texas who did not take part in the study, wrote in a commentary, also in The Lancet.
In early 2014, however, a handful of infections in southern Guinea mushroomed rapidly into an epidemic.
Over the next two years, more than 28,000 people fell ill, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Some 11,300 died.
With a mortality rate above 40 per cent, the disease -- one of a category of so-called haemorrhagic fevers -- has an incubation period of up to three weeks. It causes violent and painful symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhoea, organ failure and internal bleeding.
It is slated to be submitted by Merck to health authorities in the United States and Europe sometime next year under a fast-track approval process.
"We may have a vaccine which is registered in 2018," Kieny told journalists at a press conference Thursday, noting that the standard approval process for a new drug takes a decade, if not more.
In the meantime, Merck has committed to ensuring that 300,000 doses of the vaccine are available for emergencies under a protocol called "compassionate use".
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