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American Morning

Ask CNN: How Far Has Research on the Ebola Virus Progressed?

Aired July 11, 2001 - 9:36   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DERRICK ASH, DECATUR, GEORGIA: My name is Derrick Ash and I'm from Decatur, Georgia.

And I want to ask CNN: How far have we come in the research on the Ebola virus?

DR. PHYLLIS KOZARSKY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: There have been a great deal of research efforts in the field of Ebola since the earliest outbreaks in the late 1970s in Africa.

Since then, every time there's been an outbreak and in between times, a good number of researchers have gone to these areas scouring the landscape for animals, insects and wherever they can look for the virus in the environment where it may hide in between outbreaks because no one's been able to find what we call the reservoir of this virus. So nobody knows really where it's coming from.

A variety of animals have been looked at and have not looked as though they have harbored the virus. So researchers are continuing to look for the animal or the insect that hosts the virus in between outbreaks and have also looked for a vaccine candidate. There have been several vaccines that have been developed for rodent models as well as for non-human primates, and some of them look promising. In addition, people are looking for a variety of therapies for this virus because there are none at the present time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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