The World Health Organisation has announced that a large scale operation is underway which could see the development of a serum capable of curing Ebola patients- and that it could be ready as early as December this year.

This Ebola outbreak has been the severest in history, spreading to countries outside the continent as well. Whilst less than 10 non-Africans have died from the virus, it has killed over 4,000 people on the continent, mainly in the epicentres of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone…

The BBC reports the assistant director general for health systems and innovation at the World Health Organisation, Dr Kieny, has announced that a serum is in development which would hopefully cure the disease entirely.

The plan is to extract antibodies from the blood of those who survived the disease and reverse engineer it into a working treatment for new patients.

She said trials and testing could begin within two weeks, with aim to produce a working product by the end of the year.

“These trials would all start in the coming two weeks… and continue for six months to a year but to have initial results about safety and immunogenicity to have a choice of a dose level by the end of this year in December”

If successful, this could be the break needed to stop the rapid spread of the outbreak, which has virtually laid waste to the three aforementioned countries, and leave several neighbouring countries, including Ghana, at risk.