GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The health minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo resigned on Monday after he had been stripped of responsibility for managing the country’s Ebola outbreak, potentially paving the way for the introduction of a second vaccine to contain the spreading disease.

The minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga, had overseen the nearly year-old response to what is the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. It has killed more than 1,700 and been declared an international health emergency by the World Health Organization.

President Felix Tshisekedi on Saturday appointed a team led by Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the head of Congo’s biomedical research institute, to coordinate the government’s response in Dr. Ilunga’s place.

In his resignation letter, the minister criticized what he described as pressure by unidentified “actors” to deploy the second vaccine, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson and supported by the W.H.O.