AS Ebola spreads around the world with all the spectre of a Hollywood movie plot scientists are working furiously on possible treatments and vaccines to stop the killer virus.

And, bizarrely, the much maligned tobacco leaf and beer could hold the key to beating the disease that has claimed over 3,400 lives and is forecast to infect 1.4 million by January.

Tobacco is normally regarded as a scourge in healthcare but the tobacco leaf is needed to grow the most promising of all the Ebola treatments, the ZMAPP medicine.

ZMAPP has already been used on seven humans with the virus in the current Ebola outbreak including US missionary Dr Kent Brantly.

It is made by infecting tobacco leaves with a genetically engineered virus that contains in instructions to make three antibodies to Ebola.

All of the 18 monkeys infected with Ebola and treated with ZMAPP in a trial survived and five of the seven humans who’ve used the drug lived.

EBOLA: What you need to know

AUSTRALIA: Ebola response slammed

One of the vaccines that could help prevent the spread of Ebola could be made in any brewery according to the head of the pharmaceutical company that makes it.

“I joke around that you can turn any beer manufacturer’s manufacturing production facility into a temporary emergency factory for our vaccines because we use the same fermentation technology as the beer brewing,” Inovio Pharmaceuticals CEO and President Joseph Kim told US news organisation CNBC.

Last month a trial of this vaccine showed 100 per cent of vaccinated guinea pigs and mice were protected from death after being exposed to the Ebola virus

It normally takes a decade or more to carry out the clinical trials, safety tests and get regulatory approval for new medical treatments but these processes are likely to be sidestepped in this emergency.

In early August, an expert panel convened by the World Health Organisation decided that “in the particular circumstances of this outbreak, and provided certain conditions are met, it is ethical to offer such unproven interventions as potential treatments or for prevention of infection”.

Supplies of ZMAPP have now run out and the US Government is looking at ways to scale up the manufacture but it could be months before a few hundred thousand doses are available.

NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, who was repatriated from Liberia with Ebola, is receiving another experimental drug called brincidofovir.

This broad spectrum antiviral medicine is designed to beat DNA viruses like herpes, adenovirus and cytomegalovirus.

Test tube trials showed it appeared to work in the same way against the RNA virus Ebola.

However, it failed to save the life of Thomas Duncan who died in a Texas Hospital from Ebola earlier this week.

Canadian company Tekmira has been working with the U.S. Defence Department to develop another genetic treatment, TKM-Ebola which could stop Ebola replicating.

Biocryst is testing another antiviral drug BCX4430 that was developed to fight the lethal Marbug virus, similar to Ebola.

A fifth treatment Sarepta developed under a US Defence Department contract to treat Marbug virus could also be useful according to the World Health Organisation.

NewLink Genetics and pharmaceutical giant GSK are both testing vaccines against Ebola.

Even though Ebola emerged over 40 years ago pharmaceutical companies have had little financial interest in making a vaccine or a treatment for a disease prevalent in poor African nations.

It’s mainly as a result of US Defence Department research grants there are even any candidate treatments. The US wanted to ensure it had treatments in case Ebola was turned into a bio terrorist weapon.

It’s not only the West’s self-interested approach to medical research that has been found wanting in the Ebola crisis, our smug confidence about the superiority of our health systems has also been tested.

Questions were raised this week about the adequacy of infection control procedures in both the US and Spain.

A nurse, Teresa Romero, who treated two Spanish missionaries who died of Ebola this week became the first person to catch the disease outside West Africa.

Spain is a developed country and is expected to have the infection procedures to control the disease.

The nurse’s husband told a Spanish newspaper she had followed all the safety instructions given to her by the hospital.

However, Spanish Health care workers concerned at government health cutbacks claim they have not received proper training to cope with Ebola.

The European Commission has asked Spain to explain how the nurse could have become infected.

Australian National University infectious diseases specialist Professor Sanjaya Sananayake says it is crucial this is investigated.

“If it was a failure of equipment we’ve got to make sure the equipment is used and train people to use it properly to minimise transmission of any infection,” he said.

When Thomas Duncan first turned up at a Texas hospital with a fever and reported that he had been in Liberia he was sent home with some antibiotics.

A computer glitch meant the information that he had come from Liberia was not passed on to the doctor who treated him.

Health Minister Peter Dutton this week tried to reassure the Australian public that “we have everything in place in this country to deal with somebody who may present to quarantine, to provide medical assistance to the person”.

The Health Department has revealed more than 651 travellers had been screened at the Australian border to check they weren’t carrying the Ebola virus.

All State and Territory Health Departments have provided specific guidance to hospitals, paramedic and ambulance workforces and GPs about how to isolate, test and treat a suspected Ebola case.

And there are 14 hospitals designated to deal with Ebola in Australia, one in each state and territory.

In Sydney it’s Westmead Hospital and the Children’s Hospital Westmead. In Melbourne it’s the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital. In Queensland it’s the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, the Gold Coast University Hospital and Cairns Hospital. In South Australia it’s the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Womens and Childrens Hospital. In the Northern Territory it’s the Royal Darwin Hospital. In Tasmania it’s the Royal Hobart Hospital.

Blood testing for Ebola virus is being conducted at the National High Security Quarantine Laboratory at VIDRL in Melbourne.

A person with a suspected case of Ebola is to be quarantined in a single room and health workers caring for them have to use a fluid repellent surgical mask, disposable fluid resistant gowns, gloves, eye protection, face shields, overalls, disposable shoe covers, leg coverings and double gloving.

If the infected person has been near any animals they must be assessed for infection.

Any members of the public who have been in contact with the patient must be monitored for 21 days and given information about Ebola and what signs and symptoms to check for.

Even if Australia’s infection control procedures work to plan it still might not protect us.

Professor Senanayake says as we’ve learnt in the last two weeks “Ebola is only a plane ride away”.

That is why the Australian Medical Association, international medical aid organisations and the Opposition are criticising the Australian Government for its failure to commit Australian health and army workers to the fight against the virus at its source in West Africa.

They claim the best way of preventing the virus reaching the Australian shore is to stop it in Liberia.

Sierra Leone in 2010 had only 50 doctors to treat the country’s four million residents and its health infrastructure has been further eroded as a result of the Ebola outbreak, says Professor Senanayake.

AMA president Dr Brian Owler and Medecins Sans Frontieres which has sent 12 Australian doctors to West Africa to fight Ebola want Australia to join the US sending troops and emergency medical teams to help contain the virus in Africa.

The Australian Government has committed $18 million to international organisations involved in the Ebola battle but Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says we can’t send Australian workers because we can’t evacuate them if they become infected with Ebola.

Brian Owler says it should be possible for the government to “come to some arrangement with its so-called allies” such as the UK and the US and France, to treat health care workers if the worst should happen and they became infected.

Australian psychologist Malcolm Hugo who has returned from battling Ebola in Sierra Leone says patients were dying on the streets in some West African countries, treatment centres were being overrun and there were not enough workers to cope with the size of the problem.

He’s been working in the main treatment centre in Kailahun near the Liberian border and the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak.

“They don’t necessarily need to send medical experts because there is no treatment for Ebola,” the Medecins Sans Frontieres volunteer said.

“What they needs is logistics help to set up treatment centres, isolate infected people and track those they’ve been in contact with,” he said.

“It’s not rocket science to contain an epidemic,” he says.

US soldiers have arrived in West Africa to set up three mobile treatment centres to deal with the Ebola outbreak.

More than 4,000 US troops are expected to remain there for a year to get the infection under control.

This week the UK send 750 soldiers to West Africa to provide clinical and logistical support to contain the virus.