Elena Kudryavtseva, Maria Portnyagina, Kirill Zhurenkov found out how the world is fighting the deadly virus

More than a thousand deaths, major financial losses, horror and panic: how could the Ebola virus, discovered many years ago in a remote African village, become today a nightmare on all continents?

Treatment of Ebola requires high-tech protection for the doctors themselves (pictured are experts in sealed suits in one of the specialized centers in Germany)
Photo: Thomas Peter, Reuters

Materials prepared by Elena Kudryavtseva, Maria Portnyagina, Kirill Zhurenkov

The WHO announced that it was unable to control the epidemic because the disease was spreading much faster than before. In this regard, the question is increasingly being asked: why, over several decades, countries with advanced technologies have not created an effective medicine? And the specialists themselves working with the deadly virus around the world can be counted on one hand. Ogonyok contacted some of them to clarify the situation.

“Over the past almost 40 years, only about 3 thousand cases of Ebola virus disease have been recorded,” said David Evans, virologist, professor at the University of Warwick (UK). “And the development, testing and production of a new antiviral drug or vaccine costs at least $1 billion. This level of spending is not justifiable from the point of view of large pharmaceutical companies, which are responsible to their shareholders.

Let us remember that the Ebola virus was first identified in 1976. Then, in the small village of Nzara in southern Sudan, a cotton factory watchman died from a strange illness accompanied by profuse bleeding. Other sick people were admitted to hospital, where they infected both doctors and other patients: in the poorest areas of Africa, there are still sometimes only a few syringes for all patients, which are disinfected once a week - if there is water for this.

At the same time, an outbreak of the disease began in neighboring Zaire: a schoolteacher from a village on the banks of the Ebola River ate an uncooked monkey brain. In total, about 600 people were infected in Sudan and Zaire in the mid-70s, more than half of them died. The epidemic was stopped thanks to tough government measures: they sent in troops, cordoned off the infected areas, and ordered to shoot anyone who tries to leave the infection zone. At the same time, virologists from the WHO came here and found out that we were talking about a new virus.

The second major outbreak of Ebola occurred in 1995 and was also essentially stopped by the military. In the intervals between major tragedies, more local ones broke out - there were several dead tourists who visited caves in national parks in Africa, lovers of spicy bat stew, which is served in street cafes, doctors and scientists themselves fell ill. In Russia, for example, in 1998 and 2004, two experienced virologists died after accidentally pricking themselves with a needle, which they used to inject experimental animals with the Ebola virus.

“Until now, all outbreaks have been brought under control precisely thanks to sanitary measures,” David Evans explained in an interview with the magazine. “We are talking about basic wearing gloves, washing hands, using special glasses and other protective measures.” These methods are effective. But during the latest outbreak, we witnessed serious mistrust of the local population in the specialists from Doctors Without Borders - patients simply refuse hospitalization. In addition, there is a completely destroyed healthcare infrastructure, constant civil wars and appalling poverty. This resulted in the worst epidemic the world has ever seen.

The idea that the Ebola virus needs to be treated with “soap and education” is heard in the press almost as often as another – that such an infection can become a weapon in the hands of unscrupulous specialists. It is protection from bioterrorists that justifies working with the virus in scientific laboratories. Why has not a single drug been brought to fruition yet? After all, the genome of the Ebola virus, thanks to the work of American, German and Russian scientists, was read back in 2004. By the way, it turned out to be very close in structure to rabies and measles.

“Viruses evolve much faster than bacteria and are, so to speak, moving targets in terms of finding vaccines and drugs,” says Derek Gatherer, a biotechnologist from Lancaster University (UK). “Their genome size is smaller, so it is more difficult for drug molecules to attack them. There are very few good antiviral drugs to combat even such simple phenomena as the flu, for example. Viruses are by nature difficult opponents.

Today, none of the existing vaccines have passed clinical trials. Nevertheless, there is hope. The American company Mapp Biochemical created the drug ZMapp, after which approximately two-thirds of primates survive. The Canadian Tekmira vaccine gives primates a 100 percent survival rate. True, both medicines work if they are administered within the first 24 hours after infection.

Protect yourself from Ebola