Fighting Ebola and other 'emergent' viruses

One of our academics, Dr Michael Jarvis, is working hard on an exciting new approach that could prevent the sudden appearance of serious infection from pathogens, such as bird flu, SARS, and Ebola by vaccinating the animals that habour these microbes and from which these microbes ‘spill over’ into humans and agricultural animals. One example is the deadly Ebola virus, which in Africa periodically spills over into humans from great apes. Closer to home, this approach is also being developed to prevent bovine TB infection of cattle. You can read about Michael's work in the top science journal Nature and on the Popular Science website. Not only could this work protect humans from deadly microbes, but when applied to control of Ebola it would also protect the wild apes too (Ebola is deadly for them): this online article looks at Michael's work from an ape conservation angle.