Question: how close are scientists to curing ebola

Sinead Balgobin answered on 6 Nov 2015:

There are already some experimental treatments that have been made by scientists- the biggest problem is that we don’t really understand everything about how the disease works. Recently a woman who had ebola but recovered got sick again, and this really confused scientists. It can take a long time to come up with a cure for a disease, and even longer to find out if it’s safe for humans (everything has side-effects).

Zmapp is a treatment that scientists have been working on. It works by injecting mice with bits of the ebola virus, so that they produce lots of antibodies (these are the things that fight diseases in your body). Scientists can then try to change the mice antibodies so that they can be put into humans, where they hopefully fight off the ebola virus.

A company called Glaxosmithkline (GSK) is working on a vaccine, which uses a non-deadly virus combined with bits of the ebola virus. They made this video earlier this year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74LrBt1_-wY
It’s not infectious, so you don’t catch ebola from it. Researchers in Canada have also been working on this, but they didn’t have enough money so couldn’t get their vaccine into clinical trials.

A good (but maybe complicated) video about this is an episode of SciShow: 3 Things We Can Do To Stop Ebola https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRs1CrE5hPw