Joshua Amupadhi
South Africans may have stumbled across a treatment for the Ebola virus this week.
American scientists may shortly begin new experiments after the Gabonese doctor who brought the virus to this country responded well to steroids given to him by
doctors who did not know he had the virus.
Johannesburg Hospital’s Professor Guy Richards said he had quite recently treated 15 to 20 patients suffering from viral chicken pox pneumonia with steroids with “magical results”, and he gave these to the Ebola patient.
The patient’s response has been passed on to American researchers, who say they will begin tests on primates soon.
At the forefront of the success is the National Institute for Virology (NIV). The NIV was started 17 years ago after two young Australian tourists suddenly became ill in South Africa with high fevers. They had been travelling elsewhere in Africa.
The young man died. He said he had been bitten by something, but he didn’t know what it was. His companion, a woman, survived, and Marburg was the name of the virus identified.
Spiders had been seen near where the Australians were bitten, and it was widely reported these may have been the cause of the virus.
But it has never been proved. No one knows what hosts the almost identical viruses, Marburg and Ebola, and there is a desperate race on among scientists in Africa, the United States and Britain to identify it.