Ebola

Ebola is the name of the Ebolavirus which causes the Ebola virus disease in humans.

The virus itself has been discovered in the year 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.



Even though the virus is known for a long time there is currently now medical treatment for ebola.

In this post I will try to find answers why there isn't a vaccine for ebola and what we all can do to help!

Latest Ebola outbreak in 2014

In march 2014 Guinea reports the outbreak of the diseas. The virus is spreading to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal. On the 8th August the WHO gave a press briefing declaring ebola a international health emergency. Since then more than three years have passed and many more people are killed by ebola.

Vaccine and drug development

In the year 2005 a team of researchers published a study that shows that the virus Vesicular stomatitis can be used to fight against Ebola. [1]

But there has also been progress in developing a drug to treat ebola. A team of researchers demonstrated in an animal experiment that they can actually cure ebola with a serum containing three different antibodies. [2]

The next step would be to test the drug on humans. According to Heinz Feldmann from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) is money is the only thing that prevents researchers to start with the experiments. [3].

Because most of the infected people are from west africa large pharmaceutical companies are not interested in investing money to test the drugs. Most people couldn't afford this drugs anyway.

How you can help

The most expensive part of the drug development process is to experiment with possible drug candidates in the laboratory.

With modern computing technics this can be simulated and speed of the proces! But researchers still lack access to computing power. With BOINC you can donate your spare computing power to researchers that really need it.

You can help to cure ebola, cancer, hiv or many other things. And in the same time you can make some money with gridcoin.

Gridcoin is a digital currency like Bitcoin that rewards you for donating your computing time to scientific research!