Crisis spiralled 'out of control'

Peter Piot

The humanitarian crisis wrought by the deadly Ebola virus raging through West Africa will not be over until a vaccine is developed, the scientist who discovered the virus has warned.

Professor Peter Piot, part of the team who identified the Ebola virus in north western Zaire in 1976, warned the crisis has spiralled 'out of control'.

While he predicted the epidemic could be over by this time next year, he said it will take years to help reconstruct the countries devastated by the virus.

But he warned the crisis is unlikely to come to a halt until one of three experimental vaccines, currently being trialled in the UK and US, is available to immunise the population.

It comes as pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline on Friday warned the vaccine it is developing may 'come too late' for the current epidemic.

Dr Ripley Ballou, who is heading up GSK's Ebola vaccine research, said the full data on the trial drug's safety and efficacy will not be ready until late 2015.

But Prof Piot remains hopeful we will begin to see the results of the vaccine trials by Christmas.

“In theory Ebola is very easy to control, but it has got completely out of hand,” he said, speaking at a seminar at Oxford University. “This is no longer an epidemic, it is a humanitarian crisis.

“It may be we have to wait for a vaccine to stop the epidemic.

“The good news is I think this is the last Ebola outbreak where we only have isolation and quarantine to treat.

“Hopefully we will have a drugs and vaccines to offer in Africa.”

The director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “I am optimistic, I think we will know the results of the first trial by Christmas.

“In the meantime manufacturers are boosting capacity, it is optimistic work.

“And then we would need a massive immunisation programme, which would have to be accepted by the population.

“We will have to establish who comes first. Those most at risk will be healthcare workers, so we will have to work out how to do it.

“These vaccines are looking to be effective so I am very optimistic.”

He added: “One of the big challenges with Ebola is it is not over until the last patient has died or recovered without infecting anybody else.”

Drawing on his experience of 25 previous outbreaks in the last 37 years, Prof Piot said it takes just one victim to reignite Ebola.

He said while keeping a track of the current outbreak, he believed it was about to come to a halt in May.

“Most of these outbreaks have been in central Africa. There was one in Ivory Coast but that was a different strain from 1976,” he said.

“They have mostly been contained to the Congo, Uganda and South Sudan.

“That is why there wasn't much interest in this outbreak at the start, because it wasn't really a big issue.

“All that changed this year.” 

The story of the biggest Ebola outbreak in history began in Guinea in December last year.

The disease has killed nearly 4,000 people, infecting in excess of 8,000 - the majority in the West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Communities lie in ruins, thousands of children have been orphaned, millions face starvation but the virus continues its unprecedented pace, invading and destroying vast swathes of these countries.

And it will continue to do so if drastic action is not taken on the front line.

The international response is finally coming up to speed with the UK and US leading the way, with the 'abysmal reaction by the rest of Europe', prompting calls that more can be done.

While the virus continues to ravage West Africa it will continue to pose a risk to countries across the world.

It is in West Africa that the fight against Ebola must be waged, if the region is to survive.