At the height of West African Ebola epidemic in 2014, the medicine chest was all but empty; no approved drug was available to facilititate treatment. With no signs of the disease abating and the fatality rate hovering around 70 per cent, the World Health Organization (WHO) in August 2014 declared that it was not unethical … Continue reading An Ebola cloud with a silver lining
Guinea
Editorial: Victory over Ebola
The alacrity and eagerness shown by the research community to find a safe and efficacious vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus has borne fruit. The interim results of a Phase III clinical trial in Guinea using a novel virus vaccine (rVSV-ZEBOV) have shown 100 per cent efficacy after 10 days of vaccination. People who received … Continue reading Editorial: Victory over Ebola
Editorial: Another Ebola battle won
On January 18, the World Health Organization and the Malian government declared Mali free of the Ebola virus disease. Mali is the third country after Nigeria and Senegal to become free of the deadly disease. A country should have had no new cases of Ebola for a continuous period of 42 days, which is a … Continue reading Editorial: Another Ebola battle won
Ebola: Australia not to send health workers to Africa
In what can be best described as a damp squib, Australia has assured financial aid — $20 million over the next eight months — to manage and run a 100-bed British field hospital in Sierra Leone but has shied away from sending health workers to Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone, the three West African countries … Continue reading Ebola: Australia not to send health workers to Africa
Editorial: Lessons to be learnt
Nearly nine months after the Ebola virus first struck in Guinea, grim statistics reveal that in the four West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, the disease is far from being tackled. The Ebola outbreak has rather become the “largest, and most severe and complex” ever in its history. As on … Continue reading Editorial: Lessons to be learnt
Editorial: Keeping Ebola in check
After the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) in 2009 and polio in May 2014, the WHO has now declared the Ebola (Ebola virus disease) outbreak in West Africa as an “extraordinary event” and a “public health risk to other countries.” It has also highlighted that the “consequences” of its spread across the world could be … Continue reading Editorial: Keeping Ebola in check