MOSCOW, August 26 (RIA Novosti) - Two suspected cases of Ebola in Russia have not been confirmed, the country’s head sanitary doctor, Anna Popova, said Tuesday.
“So far up to today, there were two cases in Russia that we considered necessary to investigate. The diagnosis turned out to be neither clinical, nor laboratory [cases of Ebola],” Popova said.
She pointed out that since March, Russia has been carrying out all the necessary measures to detect possible Ebola cases in the country. Extra security measures have also been put in place at airports, seaports, and other points of entry into the country.
“We are in touch with airlines and we monitor transit passengers. If they are coming from one of those [Ebola-stricken] countries, we have time to evaluate the risks while they are waiting for the flight. We have the necessary equipment, including infrared imagers, in order to see whether there are people with high [temperatures] on board,” Popova added.
The Ebola virus is currently raging in West Africa, which is the biggest outbreak of the virus in history. There is no licensed treatment or cure for Ebola at the moment, although companies in the United States and Japan have been developing drugs to treat the disease.
US medication ZMapp was first tested on humans in August 2014. The drug has been administered to two US citizens and two doctors from Nigeria and Uganda whose condition has significantly improved since. However, a Spanish priest and Liberian doctor Abraham Borbor, who had also received the ZMapp treatment, did not survive.
Tokyo has plans to provide an experimental drug to more than 20,000 Ebola victims, should the World Health Organization (WHO) approve. The medication, Avigan, developed by Fujifilm Holdings, is a pill that was approved in March as an anti-influenza drug in Japan and is currently undergoing clinical trials in the United States.
According to WHO, more than 1,400 people have died from the deadly Ebola disease since its breakout in West Africa, with more deaths expected in Liberia, Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
The Ebola virus disease is a highly deadly illness with a 90 percent mortality rate. It is transmitted through direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of the infected.
