This outbreak is really just a progression of what has been happening,” virologist Dr Leslie Lobel said of the epidemic, which has so far killed more than 1,600 people since March.
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| Dr Leslie Lobel |
“It is a result of the fact that the world has fallen asleep when it comes to fighting infectious diseases. There has not been enough surveillance or development of expertise to control infectious diseases since the 1970s,” he said.
In addition, Lobel cited globalization and global warming as factors leading to the current outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever. Both have upset the ecological niches of bats, which many scientists believe serve as the reservoir for the virus.
Lobel has been following 120 Ugandan Ebola survivors, half of them since he began his research program more than a decade ago.
Doctor Lobel believes that he and his team are just three to five years away from arriving at what he calls a “cocktail” consisting of a vaccine and a therapeutic that can be deployed as soon as an outbreak is detected.
Photo - Dr. Leslie Lobel in the lab. (photo credit: Dani Machlis/Courtesy Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Times of Israel)
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