15-minute test for Ebola ‘could be a game-changer’

Tulane University scientists in New Orleans have created an Ebola diagnostic device that they say is as easy to use and nearly as fast as a home pregnancy test. The potentially game-changing device, which takes only a drop of blood and 15 minutes to identify the disease, is awaiting federal approval before it can be used in West Africa. Doctors there say it is sorely needed to prevent people from spreading the deadly virus while they wait days for lab results. Currently, trained health workers must take a blood sample - raising their chances of infecting themselves - then send it to one of 12 labs in the region that can diagnose Ebola.

You go back [to the patient] and more often than not the person is not there or the person has died and in the interim they’ve probably infected several other people.

Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology at Tulane, who helped create the testing device

The World Health Organization announced yesterday that 5,000 people have died from the Ebola virus worldwide and that the death rate for those who contract it is around 70 per cent. Even though WHO plans to test vaccines for the virus in West Africa as early as December, a rapid test is still needed. Guinea and the other West African countries battling the disease are aiming to get 70 per cent of their Ebola sufferers isolated to stem the rapid spread of the deadly virus.

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