Challenges Remain for Technologies to Fight Ebola
Original article from: MIT Technology Review posted on August 6, 2014. By Alexandra Morris
As of last week, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa had claimed the lives of 88 percent of the more than 1,000 confirmed cases. While several technologies for controlling the spread of the disease are under development, deploying them will not be straightforward.
Ebola is a virus that causes fever, headache, sore throat, and other symptoms, followed by vomiting and diarrhea. It can lead to internal and external bleeding, and often death. In the U.S., there is currently no FDA-approved treatment or vaccine for Ebola, and patients are currently treated with “supportive care,” meaning that doctors and other health-care staff regulate their fluids, monitor their blood pressure, replenish their blood, and provide aid to the kidneys or the lungs as needed, says Nahid Bhadelia, an epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center and the director of Infection Control at National Emerging Infectious Diseases Lab in Boston. Bhadelia is part of a team scheduled to travel to Sierra Leone later this month.