The Obama administration said Tuesday it will allow foreign nationals from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa to stay in the U.S. for another six months, even though global health officials said the outbreak that killed 11,000 people abroad is officially over.

During the Ebola outbreak of 1995 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, eight patients with Ebola were given blood transfusions from people who had recently recovered from Ebola. Seven of them survived.

The blood of people who have recently recovered from an infection contains antibodies that the body develops naturally to fight that infection. The transfusion of these antibodies into infected individuals (as whole blood, plasma, or concentrated antibodies) has a long history and has been proposed as a possible treatment for Ebola virus disease.

see more at: http://www.dddmag.com/news/2016/03/treating-ebola-plasma

Image: Trypanosoma brucei gambiense. Photo: Zephyris. CC BY-SA 3.0

blogs.scientificamerican.com - January 29th 2016 - John R. Platt

Like a lot of people, I make sure to get a flu shot every year. That’s because the viruses that cause influenza mutate all the time, creating new strains that require new treatments.

That’s not the case with the disease known as African sleeping sickness, which kills thousands of people a year.

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