As the World Health Organization warns the number infected by Ebola could triple to 21, 000 within the next six weeks, trials on new drugs are being fast-tracked in the UK. More than 2, 600 lives have been lost in the worst outbreak since the virus was first discovered 38 years ago. The global charitable foundation, Welcome Trust, has put up more than five million US dollars for research into a treatment.
International efforts to curb the spread of the Ebola epidemic appear to be ramping up. Here a German aid organization works on the construction of a new isolation center in the Liberian capital of Monrovia.
Chinese medical workers have arrived in Guinea and Cuban medics prepare for deployment.
Without international assistance, the World Health Organization has warned Ebola infections could rise to one-and-a-half million by the new year.
"This is an exponential increase with hundreds, going into thousands of cases per week, and if we don’t stop the epidemic very soon, this is going to turn from a disaster into a catastrophe," WHO strategy director Christopher Dye said.
Currently, WHO says Ebola kills around 70 percent of those infected with the virus with some strains having death rates as high as 90 percent.
At Oxford University’s center for tropical medicines, they’ve fast-tracked trials in an attempt to find a cure. Clearly, if successful, it’ll bring down Ebola’s horrendous mortality rate. But these are early days.
Peter Horby, of the university’s clinical research unit is to test experimental drugs in West Africa as part of a five-million dollar emergency program funded by the global charitable foundation ’Wellcome Trust.’
“We have to do something now. The only time we can study these drugs and see if they work and make a difference is to do the studies now. Normally a clinical trial would be developed over many years. Now we just can’t afford to wait that long,’ Peter Horby said.
Across the campus in Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, they’re working on an experimental vaccine. Ruth Atkins, the first volunteer in the British safety trial, has received an injection.
Ebola has revealed a worldwide weakness in modern medicine. The search for a vaccine and a cure now taking center stage in the fight against a disease that’s raging out of control.