SURVIVOR BLOOD

There’s also a growing movement to use whole blood or plasma from recovered Ebola patients in the treatment of Ebola sufferers. These survivors have antibodies which have successfully fought the virus. It is not proven to be effective, but is promising enough that it has spawned a burgeoning black market in Ebola survivor blood in West Africa.

AN EBOLA VACCINE?

While an FDA‑approved Ebola vaccine isn’t yet available, The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is currently evaluating two candidates under serious consideration. A statement from the WHO on September 2, 2014, after a summit that brought together nearly two hundred experts, declared that they had discussed “several therapeutic and vaccine interventions that should be the focus of priority clinical evaluation at this time [and that]… a number of candidate vaccines and therapies have been developed and tested in animal models and some have demonstrated promising results. In view of the urgency of these outbreaks, the international community is mobilizing to find ways to accelerate the evaluation and use of these compounds.”

Basically, it’s about safety in humans versus possible adverse side effects. The current thinking is that the benefits of an effective vaccine outweigh the risk of side effects. When the safety issues are resolved, it is highly possible that the Ebola vaccine will become available relatively soon, first to health workers and then to the general public.

TIP

The WHO warns that you still need to remain cautious about the possibility of infection and not assume that a cure is forthcoming.