Controlling the Ebola Epidemic

America Can't Fight Off This Fatal Human Virus

It’s just like out of some sci-fi horror movie. A deadly human virus is widely spreading across a major part of our globe. According to the New York Times: 

The uncontrolled spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa has laid bare how unprepared the United States and other advanced countries are to protect and treat hundreds if not thousands of Africans whose lives are threatened by an extremely dangerous virus for which there is no cure. 
 

So far 961 have died from this virus and 1,779 people in four different African countries have also now been infected. The World Health Organization has declared this a Global Epidemic and everyone is at risk. 
According to NBC4, Doctors say just one plane ride can bring the Ebola virus to the United States. In Bethesda, Maryland, scientists are studying blood samples and measuring antibodies as they work on a vaccine. 

“Someone can get infected in one of these West African countries, feel reasonably well, get on a plane, get off and then all of a sudden get sick here. That’s feasible, and I don’t think anybody can deny that.”  ~ Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. 

As for a cure, they are doing clinical testing and one has not yet been found. The scientists are hopeful that one day soon they will have a breakthrough. 

It’s a complicated process of finding the right combination of genes from the virus that’s effective with few side effects, but they are closer than ever, Fauci said.

“Vaccine has been tried in monkey models, and it seems to be really quite promising,” he said.

The vaccine is made with genetic material from the virus, meaning there’s no live virus involved.

“You don’t inject the entire virus of Ebola because that would be dangerous, so what you do is you get a very small component of the virus, which is a protein that coats the outside of the virus,” Fauci said.

If the cure proves to be safe and effective then they can only hope to make it available by 2015. The first group to get the cure would be the health care workers. The Federal Government should be one of the first on the list to receive the cure thanks to the new found law called The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.