‘Ebola is easier to avoid than malaria’

Aug 27, 2014 

Liberia fires absentee ministers amid crisis

The head of the US Agency for International Develop-ment, Jeremy Konyndyk, on Tuesday said poor understanding of Ebola was undermining the fight against the epidemic, pointing out that the fever is harder to get than malaria. “Helping people better understand how to protect themselves is critical in controlling this outbreak,” he said.

Meanwhile, Liberia’s leader has sacked ministers and senior government officials who defied an order to return to the west African nation to lead the fight against the deadly Ebola outbreak, her office said on Tuesday. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had told overseas ministers to return within a week as part of a state-of-emergency ann-ouncement on August 6, warning that the extraordinary measures were needed “for the very survival of our state”. Her office said in a statement that she had “directed that all officials occupying ministerial-level positions or equivalent, senior and junior, managing directors, deputy/assistant directors or equivalent, commissioners et cetera who violated the orders are hereby relieved of their positions.”

In the meantime, scientists have discovered that a family of proteins, TIM that helps HIV treatment, can also block the release of these deadly viruses. “This provides new insight into our understanding of not only HIV but also Ebola and other viruses,” said Shan-Lu Liu, associate professor in the University of Missouri School of Medicine’s department of Molecular Microbiol-ogy and Immunology. “TIM proteins prevent the realese of viral particles and instead keep them tethered to the cell surface,” said Gordon Freeman, associate professor of medicine with Harvard Medical Scho-ol’s Dana-Farber Can-cer Institute.