• Question: Have you heard about the ebola outbreak? if so, have you done any research towards it, or try to find a cure yet?

    Asked by jazzybee to Alan, Becky, Jo, Sankar, Sarah on 11 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I wouldn’t be very good at researching the ebola virus – my research is very different. So I leave it to the scientists who specialise in this area!

    • Photo: Jo Sadler

      Jo Sadler answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I haven’t done any research personally on Ebola, however the company I work at (GSK) have developed a vaccine for Ebola which is currently in clinical trials, so we are very much involved with trying to tackle it.

    • Photo: Becky Gregory

      Becky Gregory answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Unfortunately I do not work on the ebola virus. It would be very worthwhile to research it and try and find a cure, or at least a successful vaccine to prevent it. However, my field of research is not on such viruses, but there are hopefully many scientists working on it at this very moment.

    • Photo: Sarah Kirk

      Sarah Kirk answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      I’m a plastics chemist, and although my research is indirectly linked to medical stuff, biologists are probably the best people to be working on this problem.

      Also, I think that it is not only science that can help stop the outbreak of diseases like this – it needs a social approach. You need to have awareness in the community about how diseases spread, well equipped hospitals and clean water supplies.

      The countries where Ebola has spread (Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia) are ones which have had problems such as not enough doctors, recent war, lack of infrastructure, etc. Compare these places to Nigeria, which had Ebola cases but has much better facilities available so they were able to control the disease and prevent it spreading. We need to work towards ending poverty and war so that diseases will not be able to spread so easily.

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