A HEALTHY Briton has become 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 at the University of Oxford.

She is one of 60 volunteers taking part in the trial over the coming weeks.

Ms Atkins, who has also worked as a nurse in the NHS, said: "I feel absolutely fine, it felt no different to being vaccinated before going on holiday."

The trial is being led by Professor Adrian Hill of the Jenner Institute at the university, who hailed it as a "very important step" in bringing the disease, which has so far killed more than 2,250 people, under control.

"If everything works well over the coming months we will hopefully be using this for healthcare workers by the end of the year," he said.

"This vaccine has never been given to a person before so it's a very important step in fighting the outbreak of Ebola." He added: "This is the best candidate for an Ebola vaccine we have anywhere in the world."

Ms Atkins, 48, said she first heard about the trial while listening to the radio.

"I volunteered because the situation in west Africa is so tragic and I thought being part of this vaccination process was something small I could do to hopefully make a huge impact."

The vaccine, co-developed by the US National Institutes of Health and GSK, targets the "Zaire species" of Ebola which is one of the strains circulating in west Africa. It uses a single benign Ebola virus protein to generate an immune response.