What We Don’t Know About Ebola (Interview w/ Elke Muhlberger, PhD)
Original article from: WebMD posted on October 3, 2014. By Brenda Goodman
When Ebola arrived in the U.S. last week, it came with a steep learning curve.
Hospitals that thought they were prepared learned they had gaps in their communication. Public health officials soon learned about the problems of dealing with Ebola-contaminated waste and the difficulties of keeping exposed people at home. Parents of school-aged children struggled to understand the risks of sending kids back to their classrooms. We learned about flaws in the system that screens travelers.
That made us wonder: What else don’t we know about Ebola?
To find out, we reached out to Ebola experts to get their thoughts.
Elke Muhlberger, PhD, is a microbiologist at the Boston University School of Medicine, who specializes in the study of filoviruses, the virus family to which Ebola belongs. Amesh Adalja, MD, is an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. And Thomas Geisbert, PhD, is a microbiologist and immunologist who specializes in Ebola at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
Here’s their list of big questions that remain to be answered about the virus.