Problem

VOICE OF AMERICA  by Carol Guensburg                                                                                 Dec. 5, 2014
The Ebola virus, indiscriminate and opportunistic, has infected more than 17,000 people in West Africa, the World Health Organization reports. But some observers fear the epidemic may be exacting an especially heavy toll on women and girls.    

Its impact goes well beyond the disease itself, amplifying females’ vulnerabilities, exploiting their limits within traditional societies, and motivating responses of strength and resilience.

Fatmata Sowa, 28, is among the few women who've joined the Red Cross safe and dignified burial teams in Sierra Leone. ( Lisa Pattison / IFRC)

Everybody and his uncle, it seems, has an idea of something that might work to cure people infected with the deadly virus

 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN    By Helen Branswell                        Dec. 4, 2014

When it comes to treatments for Ebola, there has been a nearly four-decade-long drought. Nothing in the medical arsenal attacks the virus directly....

Dr. John M. Dye, Jr., U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) Viral Immunology branch chief, works in a laboratory at the USAMRIID headquarters in Frederick, Maryland. Dr. Dye is leading a team that is conducting a study with nonhuman primates involving the experimental drug ZMapp, an experimental treatment for Ebola patients. Credit: CDC

AFP                                                                                                          Dec. 2, 2014

FREETOWN -- Ebola-hit Sierra Leone has quarantined hundreds of thousands more citizens, it said Tuesday, sealing off a sixth district, with more than half of the country's population already under lockdown.

A nurse wearing personal protective equipment checks on a patient at the Kenama ebola treatment center run by the Red Cross Society on November 15, 2014 in Sierra Leone ©Francisco Leong (AFP/File)

Tonkolili, in the centre, was added to the growing list of districts which no one is allowed to leave or enter without special dispensation, in an effort to combat an outbreak which is spiralling out of control, with 1,400 deaths so far....

The northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali were closed off indefinitely along with the southern district of Moyamba in September -- effectively sealing in more than one million people.

by Shalini Saxena - Nov 30 2014 - http://arstechnica.com

We know what antibodies stop it in its tracks—we now know where they attach.

The latest Ebola outbreak has dwarfed any that have occurred since the discovery of the virus in 1976; previous outbreaks have had lethality rates of up to 90 percent. Yet no vaccines or therapies are currently approved for human use, which limits our ability to treat patients and contain the outbreak. Mixtures of monoclonal antibodies (see sidebar) are a potential treatment option that has been used experimentally.