In Liberia the disease is spreading quickly. The country’s existence is now “seriously threatened” as the functions of state are disrupted, Brownie Samukai, Liberia’s minister of national defence, said this week. The health system, already weak, is breaking down. At least 160 Liberian health-care workers have contracted the disease and half of them have died. Ebola is also spreading in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, and a case has been reported in Senegal. This is the worst-ever outbreak. Yet even though the disease was discovered almost 40 years ago, there are no licensed treatments or vaccines. That is largely because Ebola has been an intermittent disease in some of the world’s least- developed places. Previous outbreaks flared up but then died back. The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals (fruit bats are a natural host) and then spread by contact with body fluids. As Ebola was confined to poor countries and largely containable with strict infection controls, there was little commercial reason for drug companies to embark on years of costly clinical trials to bring Ebola medicines to marke
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 01:18:36 +0000
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