Ebola Virus

As the horrors of Sudan's ethnic conflict mount, opportunities for pathogenic microbes -- germs that could threaten people all over the world -- rise in tandem. War and disease are often a matched set in Africa, with terrifying results: If the fighting doesn't kill you, disease very well could. And without outside help to stop the cycle, the devastating results will only spread.

In light of the resignation of chief Iraq weapons inspector David Kay (Jan. 24) and his assertion that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, the search is on for the cause of the intelligence failure that led to President Bush's pre-war assertion about Iraq's massive WMD effort. Kay has cast a significant shadow of doubt on the major justification for the war. Perhaps, in time, the alleged intelligence failure may also prove to be a phantom, for one has to wonder if it was the intelligence itself or the interpretation thereof that led to the president's conclusion that war was necessary.

The first treatment to show any promise against the deadly Ebola virus has cured one-third of the monkeys it was tested on -- raising hopes that a lifesaving therapy for people may be on the horizon. In the study, reported this week in the research journal Lancet, scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases used a protein that blocks blood coagulation, considered to be a major problem in the disease.

A volunteer has received the first human inoculation of an experimental vaccine designed to prevent infection by Ebola, a lethal African virus that some officials fear could be used as a weapon of bioterrorism. Researchers at the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the National Institutes of Health, administered the vaccine to a volunteer Tuesday at the NIH clinical center in Bethesda, Md., officials announced.

U.S. government researchers said Wednesday that they had developed a vaccine that protected monkeys against the Ebola virus with a single dose -- offering a new way to stop an outbreak of the deadly disease. The vaccine was made using a new approach that should work against a range of other viruses as well, the researchers said. And the technology might offer a quick way to develop an instant vaccine against new infections, such as SARS, or even a biological weapon. Dr.

Chinese researchers say they may have found the hitherto elusive source of the SARS outbreak, tracking the virus that causes it to civet cats sold in a Guangdong marketplace and eaten by some Chinese as a delicacy.

U.N. health officials confirmed that a disease outbreak that has killed at least 59 people in the Republic of Congo was Ebola and warned that the lethal hemorrhagic fever could still be spreading. The Cuvette West region has been quarantined by the government since last week. Blood samples drawn from victims tested positive for Ebola, a health official said.

The death toll from a suspected outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Republic of Congo has risen to 51, and people have begun fleeing into dense forest to escape what some believe to be an evil spell, authorities said. Officials have tried to impose tight restrictions on movement in the hope of preventing the spread of the illness, the second outbreak reported in a little over a year in the remote northwest. It is thought to have been caused by the consumption of infected monkey meat.

An Ebola outbreak is suspected in the deaths of 48 people in the Republic of Congo and many others are sick, officials said. Experts in the Cuvette West region are taking blood tests amid "strong" suspicions that the disease is Ebola, said Joseph Mboussa of the Health Ministry. The outbreak is thought to be linked to the consumption of infected monkey meat.

Annelisa M. Kilbourn, 35, a veterinarian and wildlife expert who found that gorillas are vulnerable to the Ebola virus, died in a plane crash Saturday in the Central African nation of Gabon. A British citizen who was born in Zurich, Switzerland, Kilbourn studied ecology and environmental biology at the University of Connecticut, graduating in 1990. She earned a degree in veterinary medicine at Tufts University in 1996.