Russian scientists to set up lab in Guinea to fight Ebola
Baku, August 26 (AZERTAC). A team of Russian virologists, epidemiologists and bacteriologists is leaving for Africa to organize laboratory diagnosis of the Ebola virus in Guinea, where the outbreak of the deadly fever is spreading fast.Russia’s consumer watchdog Rospotrbnadzor is dispatching a mobile laboratory to Guinea to help contain the Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus in response to a direct request from Guinea’s government.
The cargo jet to Guinea’s capital Conakry leaves from Moscow’s Ramenskoye airfield on Thursday evening.
The team includes several dozen Russian epidemiologists, virologists and bacteriologists from medical centers in Novosibirsk and Saratov. They will arrive in Guinea in about a week to operate the mobile laboratory, Aleksandr Semyonov, lab chief at the Pasteur Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Saint-Petersburg, told the RIA news agency.
The latest Ebola epidemic has already claimed 1,229 lives, and 2,240 infected people remain quarantined in hospitals throughout Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra-Leone.
There is no internationally recognized vaccine against Ebola fever, although pharmaceutical companies from Canada, Japan and the US have announced development of potential vaccines.
Russia’s Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology based in Koltsovo, in the Novosibirsk region, developed Reaferon-Lipint several years ago. This vaccine proved effective in dealing with Ebola virus during laboratory tests. Now it is hoped it can be brought to Guinea to save the lives of those infected with the deadly virus.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization does not expect a reliable vaccine against Ebola fever to be developed before 2015.
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