Leading Ebola expert claims possible cure for deadly virus

Jet, August 28, 1995

The deadly Ebola virus has claimed 233 lives since it re-emerged earlier this year in Zaire.

At least seven people survived the highly contagious killer virus though. And they have physician and professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum to thank.

Tamfum, a professor at Kinshasa University in Zaire, is also one of the world's leading virologists. In 1976, he helped identify the mysterious Ebola virus that killed 300 people.

The survivors of this latest outbreak lived because they received Tamfum's treatment. In the experimental treatment, the patients were given transfusions of blood from previous Ebola survivors.

"Now we think that we have some proof that this transfusion was effective because we have seven successful cases of Ebola fever who survived," Tamfum said.

In their efforts to find a treatment, doctors took blood from most of the Ebola survivors, tested it to make sure it was free of the AIDS virus and determined which convalescents had developed the strongest Ebola antigens.

Blood samples related to the new treatment have been sent to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for further study, but evaluating the effectiveness of the treatment would take months, said CDC spokesman Bob Howard.