Sierra Leone National Ebola Emergency Operations Center
Credit: Jennifer Brooks, CDC.
Following the launch of Band Aid 30, "the Ebola song”, on X-factor [Sunday 16 November 2014], Bob Geldorf did the media rounds on the Monday morning including BBC 5live, to further drive home the message. People are dying from Ebola in West Africa because they are poor, living in countries without the health service infrastructure to stop it in its tracks, and “we are all just a plane ride away from it”.AS of that Monday, you can buy and download the song here via Amazon, Itunes and Google Play, or purchase the CD.
WE at CABI, devoted last month’s focus of the Global Health Knowledge Base e-newsletter to Ebola research.
With the charitable effort of Band Aid 30 ringing in our ears, I thought it timely to highlight another such effort, from researchers, specifically from the Wellcome Trust.
Wellcome Trust: Emergency Ebola initiative
The Wellcome Trust (WT), the world's second largest private funder of medical research after Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are funding a multi-million pound emergency research package [Emergency Ebola Initiative] to investigate new approaches to treat, prevent and contain Ebola viral disease, during the current epidemic in West Africa. WT will also support research into the ethical challenges of testing experimental medicines during epidemics, and has a £40 million long-term investment in African science.
One of their anti-Ebola vaccines is being fast-tracked.
Further Reading
- Enhanced methods for unbiased deep sequencing of Lassa and Ebola RNA viruses from clinical and biological samples. Genome Biology 2014, 15:519.
A new rapid sequencing method created for Lassa, was applied to Ebola virus, sequencing nearly 100 Ebola patient blood samples In Sierra Leone, within 10 days. The method is also cost-effective, and may help West African nations rapidly and effectively track outbreaks with limited resources. This article is one of the records on CABI's Global Health database.
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